

THE 

AGABOND Book 

FARRINGTON 




TH£ OQUAGA PRESS 







Gop\TlghlX"^^5-Q^ 



COl'YUKiUT DKPOSIT. 



THE VAGABOND BOOK 



THE 
VAGABOND BOOK 



BY 

FRANK FARRINGTON 



THE OQUAGA PRESS 

DEPOSIT. N. Y. 

1905 



• v.;, «Qp:es 


rti^'iJive'J 


rvUV 11 


8ryi> 







T^3^/' 



.A7t 



1/3 



C) tf 



r 



Copyright, 1905, bv 
THE OQUAGA PRESS 



NOTE 

The Author is indebted to the following publications 

for permission to reprint parts of the co7itents of The 

Vagabond Book: 

Leslie^ s Monthly Magazine 

The Criterion 

Lippincotf s Magazine 

The Ladies' World 

Outing 

Birds and Nature 

Recreation 

Field and Stream 

Doubledayy Page ^ Co, 



CONTENTS 



Vagabond . 

Vagabond Invitation 

The Last Walk in Autumn 

The Year's Twilight 

Through October Woods 

Vagabondia for Shut-ins 

Life's Highway . 

The Wanderlure 

Rivers 

The River Path 

The Road . 

Trail Song 

The Land Sailor 

Travelers . 

Song for March 

December Walking 

Winter Song 

The Winter Camp 

There Is a Place 

Rest Ye Here . 

By Lotus Lake . 

The Spirit . 

Road Song 

The Spirit . 

The Trapper 

When Autumn Calls 

An Abdication 

Gypsying 

Gypsy Invitation 

The Rover Heart 

Fellowship 



PAGE 

I 

3 

4 

lo 

1 1 

12 
22 

23 
24 

26 
28 

3» 
32 
33 
35 
37 
44 
46 

47 
50 
51 
53 
55 
56 
57 
64 

65 
66 

69 

70 

7» 



CONTENTS 



The Vagabonds . 

The Art of Loafing . 

The Hazy Days . 

My Dream .... 

Night .... 

South Wind Blow 

Show Places 

Quebec .... 

Hospitality 

The Inn of the Golden Dream 

The Covered Bridge . 

Bonfire Days 

The Marching Souls . 

A Particular Walk . 

The Hill Road . 

Having Fun 

Mistress Willow 

Out in the Wind 

The Four Winds 

Being Lonely 

Spring for Me . 

Stone Walls 

Along the Old Stone Wall 

Cross Lots 

June 

October .... 
At the Old Homestead 
Old Home Hills 
Going Fishing 
A Good-Bye 



72 

73 
78 
79 
80 
82 

83 
86 

89 
92 

93 
95 
97 
98 

lOI 

103 
105 
106 
108 
109 
III 
112 

115 
117 
120 
123 
124 
130 
132 
»39 



VAGABOND 

THIS call to Vagabondia is not an attempt 
to induce the members of the world of 
industry to abandon legitimate pursuits 
and come out upon the highways to live an aim- 
less, pauper existence. Vagabondia does not 
mean trampdom. It means simply, get the love 
of God's outdoors in your heart; get the high- 
ways and the byways in your blood. Know no 
restrictions of weather or of season. All year 
round is the roving time for the true lover of 
the star-set canopy and the woods and the fields, 
come rain or shine. Get out of doors and be a 
vagabond ! 

When vacation offers opportunity, let not the 
chance unimproved slip by. Vagabondia with all 
her glories, her splendid beauties, her absorbing 
freedom, is at hand. There is in Nature's heart 
a love of mankind that bids her draw you to her 
breast. Repulse her not. 

If vacation is yet afar off or even if yours be 
a life in which (though Heaven forbid!) vaca- 

I 



THE VAGABOND BOOK 

tions are unknown, yet there are portions of the 
limitless realm of Vagabondia accessible at your 
very door. There is no need of shutting out Na- 
ture because perchance you cannot see her under 
the most ideal conditions. 

If available only in the stilted form of artificial 
park, seek her there. Find some place from 
which a vista looking across the water or into 
the hills will take you out of your sordid self. 
Be a Vagabond at heart. 

If the times and seasons, the snows of winter, 
April's showers and greenness, summer's fasci- 
nating sweet idleness, and the ripened autumn, 
please you only as one caring naught for art ad- 
mires it as a clever trick of imitation ; if outdoors 
does not grip your heart with a clutch that 
threatens to drag you forth into the woods, away 
from business however urgent, then these verses 
and these little essays will be to you but words, 
idle words. Pass them by, they're not for thee. 
If you are a Vagabond — well, the Vagabond is a 
law unto himself and what he may accept or re- 
ject, no man can pre-determine, but of this the 
writer is certain, you will understand. 

2 



VAGABOND INVITATION 



c 



OME along, all vagabonds. 

Here's the roving season. 
Leave the humdrum, workaday 
Life and let unreason 



Be your guiding star a while. 

Wander where the weather, 
Frosty morns and early eves. 

Eats away the tether 

Bound around you by the cares 

Of labor, labor, labor. 
Shake the sordid from your soul. 

Forget that work's your neighbor. 

Strike the pike with joy afoot 
Through the autumn's shining. 

If it showers, never mind. 
There's a silver lining. 

Take God's star-set canopy 

For a roof protection ; 
Out of doors be all your home. 

Four walls breed dejection. 



THE VAGABOND BOOK 

Join the free-heart rovers who 
Know the earth's best pleasure. 

An autumn haze o'er all the days 
And time one need not measure. 



THE LAST WALK IN 
AUTUMN 

"No sound was in the woodland save 

The squirrel's dropping shell, 
And the yellow leaves among the boughs. 
Low rustling as they fell." 

THE nature lover's poet, the poet whose 
verse is of a natural simplicity, free from 
complexity, though possessed of depths 
which are comprehended only after reading and 
re-reading, is beyond a doubt Whittier, with his 
ideal outdoor realm pictured through all the 
changes of the year. 

One of the most beautiful songs, from a Vaga- 
bond's point of view, is "The Last Walk in 
Autumn," which I beg you to read if you are of 
the roving heart. You will realize part of its 
beauty though you be hard-headed and practical, 

4 



THE LAST WALK IN AUTUMN 

but if you can catch the true spirit of such verse 
you will in poetry find something responsive 
which you have hitherto missed. 

Just before the coming of the melancholy days 
which belong to the early winter, or to fall — 
which to me seems to be a season midway be- 
tween autumn and winter — one must take what 
will be the last walk before autumn gives way 
to its successor. 

Although devotedly and professedly a Vaga- 
bond, yet the coming of winter must drive one 
to seek the fireside's warmth a portion of the 
time, though it be with a heart-depressing regret 
that outdoors is less available than in the open 
seasons. 

The prophecies of winter's approach always 
sadden the soul, and to the rover of the woods 
and the fields they make that sadness too deep 
for words to describe. It is as if the death of 
one summer could not be atoned for in the birth 
of another. The summer to come will in turn 
become as dear as the one departing, though the 
knowledge of that serves but little to moderate 
the grief caused by the loss. 

5 



THE VAGABOND BOOK 

Sadness seems to impregnate the very atmos- 
phere of the last autumn afternoon, scarce sunlit, 
though far off to the south shines the sun, un- 
obscured by any cloud; and it is in a mood cor- 
responding to nature's own that one sets out, 
stick in hand, for the last walk in autumn. 

The browning pastures slope back from the 
valley to the edge of the woodland where the 
thorn-apple bushes make a fringe of Quaker 
gray as far as the eye can distinguish between 
them and the more leaden gray of the deeper 
woods of beech and oak. 

Foliage is only of the evergreens or of an oc- 
casional beech whose crisp, brown leaves will not 
be separated from the parent stem. Color seems 
to have been ruled out of nature's decorative 
scheme as much as though a semi-mourning garb 
had been donned. It is not entirely missing, but 
has become a matter of minute detail and is found 
in splotches of red sumach pompons, bright green 
grass around the springs, mullein leaves of deli- 
cate green, purpling blackberry stalks and the 
gayer colors of mosses and lichens. 

The sun's long noon shadows are lacking in 
6 



THE LAST WALK IN AUTUMN 

sharpness of outline, and one faces the south to 
find Sol looking him squarely but sleepily in the 
eye. The hills are hazy and all the world is 
unrecognizable as the same world that June 
knew. 

If one strolls out of the village and along the 
river road it will be with a sense of a subtle, all- 
pervading quiet. True, sounds are plenty; the 
river rushes along with a bluster of self-im- 
portance over its stronger current, the chickadees 
call back and forth and an occasional lumber 
wagon rolls by, laden to the top of the side-boards 
with apples and a row of empty barrels, on the 
way to the cider-mill; but in spite of the occa- 
sional noises, the sense of quiet will not down. 
It is the calm spirit of the autumn pervading 
everything, and it gives to the heart a feeling 
like unto that which comes with silence. 

A mile out of the village a lane branches from 
the road, and following the heart's inclination one 
takes that direction and begins to climb the south 
side of the hill. Exertion proves that the days 
do still possess warmth, and just at the edge of 
the woods it is good to sit down in the shelter of 

7 



THE VAGABOND BOOK 

a big rock where the sun falls hot on its side, and 
rest. 

It is like summer again; the grass is green 
among the tall brakes and the * 'devil's pitch- 
forks," grasshoppers and crickets are as lively as 
ever and one belated bee drones past, seeking a 
stray Michaelmas daisy or an out-of -season dan- 
delion in some moist spot. 

One leans back against the warm rock and 
watches a woodpecker attack a tall pine stub, 
and life with its worries and its sordid neces- 
sities seems a thing very far off and unneedful 
of consideration. The breeze blows overhead 
rattling the dead leaves, and it is like a June 
breeze as it touches the forehead with its finger, 
or reaches down to shake the little feather dusters 
of the goldenrod. 

From below in the valley come occasional 
sounds — the barking of a dog, the shouts of 
school children on their way home, or perhaps a 
wagon rumbling over a bridge with a noise like 
that of distant thunder. A cow lows across the 
valley, a partridge drums in the underbrush, 
while high above, circling around the hill's very 

8 



THE LAST WALK IN AUTUMN 

top, crow's hoarse call answers call, and yet a 
sense of quiet envelopes all. 

The grateful warmth of the place bids one stay 
until the walk is apt to end at that point. The 
sun crawls further into the southwestern hills, 
the breeze grows chill, and as the shadows creep 
up your hillside there comes a coolness that starts 
you villageward in a mood all the more sad for 
the little glance back into summer. 

Early lights are twinkling and the fragrance 
of leaf bonfires fills the streets. It is fall, and 
autumn with its gay foliage, its golden harvest 
fields, its fruit-laden orchards and shouting bands 
of nut gatherers, has made way for the frosty 
mornings and the early twilights that prophesy 
the advent of winter. 



THE YEAR'S TWILIGHT 



T 



HE grapes are purpling on the wall, 
The goldenrod turns gray ; 
The tawny beech leaves fade and fall, 
Low rustling all the day. 



The briars, fruit stripped, vengeance seek 
With sharpened claws outstretched. 

The jingling streamlet's silvery streak 
With lifeless leaves is etched. 

The grass is parching on the knoll. 

The mulleins hang their heads, 
The milkweed pods their down unroll. 

The thistles' virus spreads. 

Naught troubles nature's drowsy sleep 
While the year's soft twilight falls. 

Save the chipmunk's shrill, persistent ''cheep" 
Or the crow's uncanny calls. 



lO 



THROUGH OCTOBER WOODS 

THERE'S a path leads through the wood- 
land 
Where the squirrels chirp and call, 
Where the partridge whirs and whistles 
Through the days of fading fall. 

Deep the winding way is sprinkled 
With the leaves of red and brown, 

And protesting loud, they rustle 
As our footsteps beat them down. 

Overhead the naked branches 

With but here and there a leaf, 
Have lost their scarlet raiment 

At the hands of Wind, the thief. 

There's a silent sigh of sadness 

Goes quivering through the wood ; 
It's the tree-folk's sign of sorrow 

In their melancholy mood. 

They are reft of summer beauty 

And deserted by each friend ; 
Now resigned to winter's coming, 

Hushed, they're waiting for the end. 

II 



VAGABONDIA FOR SHUT-INS 

NOT all of those who are Vagabonds at 
heart can be Vagabonds of foot. To 
make up for this in some degree the Vag- 
abond heart always goes hand in hand with a 
vivid imagination, which not only adds to the 
glory of the outdoor Vagabondia, but makes it 
more nearly possible to the shut-in. 

The shut-in who has no view of green fields or 
running waters to aid the imagination must per- 
force make his own Vagabondia, and however 
devoted a disciple he may be of the creed, there 
will of course be many days when he will be un- 
able to rise to its sublimest heights. More than 
this, his imaginary revellings in the glories of 
outdoors will probably alternate with spells of 
deep gloom cast by the thought of the inability to 
enjoy in reality the pictures drawn by the imag- 
ination. 

But the shut-in who can look upon a willow- 
bordered stream, a wooded hilltop, a grassy park, 
a gnarled and knotted orchard or a long, maple- 
lined village street with snug lawns on either side, 

12 



VAGABONDIA FOR SHUT-INS 

has therein a basis for endless imaginative jour- 
neyings into the unlimited realms of outdoor 
travel. 

If the outlook be the row of maples, there will 
be an ever changing picture from the time the 
snows begin to melt in the early spring days until 
the branches are again covered with glittering ice 
crystals. First come the robins to bid the trees 
prepare for the summer campaign; then there 
is a general raking and scraping of the lawns 
along the line, giving up, in the warm sun of the 
first days when the doors and windows are left 
open, a fresh earthy smell that invigorates and in- 
spires the dullest spirit. 

Then the greening branches with the first leaf 
buds, the up-springing blades in mottled patches 
on the lawns, crocuses along the house walls and 
daffodils in the flower beds. Soon the leaves be- 
gin to cast a shade on the pavement, the grass 
reaches a point where the lawn-mower has to be 
used, and there floats up to open windows a frag- 
rance identical with that which the wanderer 
meets with in the July days when out among the 
broad farm lands. 



THE VAGABOND BOOK 

Every day is different to one who would follow 
the imagination and forget self to live the life of 
such outdoors as is visible, be it much or little. 
Every day the breezes play a different tune 
among the leaves and every day the leaves flicker 
with different variations of their artistic and 
graceful gyrations. 

The road lies dusty down the street or it shines 
with the wet of the recent rain ; a brown path it 
lies for the soul of the shut-in to travel in imag- 
ination to the regions where nature is queen, even 
to the eye of the most prosaic. 

When the late days of summer show the leaves 
with the brightest gloss rubbed from their green- 
ness by the roughness of the winds, and the lawns 
show brown spots where the dry season has 
parched the roots of the grass, then comes the 
time of anticipation, a looking ahead to the glories 
of the autumn foliage which will be as bright on 
the avenue for the shut-in as on the hillsides for 
the rover. 

First comes the call of a cicada, then a chorus 
of them in shrill voiced conclave and the early 
September days are at hand. Far off in some in- 

H 



VAGABONDIA FOR SHUT-INS 

visible marsh a red branch flames with its frost 
danger signal ; soon the signal is taken up by one 
branch of the farthest tree on the avenue ; one old, 
half-broken maple bursts into yellow, and then 
the whole row, taking alarm at the sign, turn 
into red and gold torches just before the first hard 
frost loosens their foliage. 

For a week the display of color is beyond de- 
scription, then a second frost, and in the quiet 
of the next morning comes a continual shower of 
the loosened leaves, covering road and pavement 
with their fresh, moist carpet which by noon has 
dried and goes scattering before the rising south- 
erly breeze. Still the trees are aflame, and for 
days the air is filled with the flying leaves as the 
equinoctial gales tear them from the branches 
and send them to eternity by way of the relent- 
less bonfires of gleeful youth. 

What a memory-arousing incense arises from 
those same bonfires to entice the imagination 
away from the cares of the present into the irre- 
sponsible freedom of past childhood ! 

Then comes the time of the bare branches, and 
when the hunter's moon shows its full face above 

15 



THE VAGABOND BOOK 

the neighboring house-tops it shows an endless 
variety of deHcate patterns woven in the leafless 
boughs of the maples. 

One window that I know — the window of a 
shut-in — at first glance seems to look out upon 
little but blank walls; but above the walls there 
towers in a single spot a rounding hilltop with a 
ragged fringe of trees and an open spot around 
one veritable giant of the forest left standing by 
some oversight of the woodsman. The observer 
can see from the window for a considerable dis- 
tance down the hillside, and though the rest of his 
little outlook may be dismal enough, yet such is 
the charm of that hill-crest that it is a source of 
never ending joy to the shut-in whose sole sight 
it is of the realm of nature. 

There the seasons change from the dazzling 
white of winter, with a line of rugged rocks 
stretching across the face of the hill, to the green 
bank of the summer foliage, and to the variegated 
crimson and gold of autumn. To a common- 
place mind it w^ould at any time be but a hillside, 
just a bit of wooded land, the w^orse off for hav- 
ing the trees still upon it, but to the confined Vag- 

i6 



VAGABONDIA FOR SHUT-INS 

abond it is a source of a thousand joys ; and joys 
of the soul are no less joys than those of ex- 
huberant physical strength. 

The detail of nature's beauties escapes the eye 
of the non- Vagabond, which notes only the great 
sights: the majestic waterfall, the mighty river. 
the tallest mountain or the deepest chasm. It is 
to the shut-in with the narrow horizon that ob- 
servance of detail reaches its highest perfec- 
tion. 

There is one such with a beautiful view from 
a high, third-story window, a view which shows 
a winding stream with rows of willows lining its 
low banks, a little island meadow with a village 
beyond and a range of divided hills o'ertopping 
all. You who have never learned or cared to 
learn the joys of Vagabondia would w^eary of the 
view in an afternoon. You would say, *'Yes, to 
be sure, it is pretty, but there is such a sameness 
to it. Don't you get very tired of it?" 

Of course any one would become weary of the 
same view day in and day out and year in and 
year out, but weary not so much of the view as 
of the deprivation from seeing other views. 

17 



THE VAGABOND BOOK 

To the person whose own view this one is, it 
is a source of countless pleasures, and through all 
the long winter and through all the long summer 
— if either winter or summer or any time in one 
life can be called long — ^the river, the meadow, the 
willows, the tree-framed roofs, the hills beyond, 
are each day as a new chapter in a book of well- 
sustained interest. 

There are days when the snow so covers every- 
thing that all contrast is obliterated and nothing 
but white shows from the surface of the frozen 
stream to the top of the highest peak, while the 
next day perhaps under the influence of a soft 
south wind the trees show black against the hill's 
white coating and the rocks peer through the 
snow, and if the same wind blows another day, 
bringing the rain, there will be a general change 
from the glaring white to an indigo black, ending 
with a rushing of waters in the little river and a 
clearing of the sky with the following cold snap, 
once more putting King Frost in charge of the 
scene. 

All the spring and all the summer the island 
meadow varies from day to day with a profu- 

i8 



VAGABONDIA FOR SHUT-INS 

sion of cowslips, dandelions, buttercups, violets, 
daisies, cardinal flower and goldenrod. These 
come and go in their time with an utter disregard 
of wind and weather, and the bird choir in the 
willows supplies a vaudeville far surpassing any 
to be heard indoors. 

The water writhes and wrinkles in endless 
variety, never twice the same, around the moated 
field. In the sun of a summer morning it shines 
clear and cool and refreshing, and in the evening 
there come across it the lights and shades of the 
sunset glories, all duplicated in the reflections 
beneath the willows. The kingfishers watch for 
their prey from the overhanging branches and 
now and again dive swiftly and surely into the 
current, bearing away in each sharp beak wrig- 
gling game for the dinner of the mate with a 
nestful of featherless offspring. 

The further hills offer the greatest glory of all 
the view, and one leaves the beauties of the near 
at hand with a regret lessened only by the knowl- 
edge of further joys. 

Hills of azure, hills of gray, hills of golden, 
purple, opal and maroon, hills of spotless white or 

19 



THE VAGABOND BOOK 

inky blue ; these are the hills across the valley, the 
hills which are never two days alike, hills which 
are never aught but glorious and beautiful, awe- 
inspiring and satisfying to the Vagabond soul. 
How their summits draw^ one to leave the narrow, 
cabined and cribbed confines of the four walls! 
How they make one long for the freedom of 
roaming without care or responsibility! How they 
satisfy the soul that cannot roam, the soul in a 
body that must measure its travels by the length 
of the journey from bed to couch and from couch 
to bed! Thank God for good legs and the 
strength to use them in going where nature has 
meant that people should go — out in the glories 
of the woods, fields, roads and hills ! 

How the hills speak to one who knows their 
voices ! The photographer may be clever, so cun- 
ning perhaps as to reproduce upon his paper the 
picture of the October afternoon with all its 
o'erspreading grays and browns and greens re- 
produced with a perfect regard for their proper 
tone values and the proportionate light and 
shadow of each and every tree and shrub. He 
may make a picture so perfect that no person can 
20 



VAGABONDIA FOR SHUT-INS 

point a single way in which that picture varies 
from the original. He may perhaps make it so 
nearly perfect that you and I, Vagabonds though 
we are, must acknowledge its perfection ; and yet, 
and yet, to look at the picture will resemble ex- 
periencing and seeing the view no more than 
looking at a perfect painting of the most delicious 
fruits will resemble eating them and tasting their 
lusciousness. 

The lights and the shadows, the distances, the 
perspectives and the objects will all be there, but 
they will not bring the feeling that the hills them- 
selves communicate to one, the indescribable, 
sympathetic mood which steals upon the senses 
unawares and sobers the most irrepressible ; there 
will not be the October smell, the perfume of the 
moistened, dying leaves of the willows and the 
incense of the bonfires ; in short there will be lack- 
ing the life of the scene though it be technically 
perfect, just as one might make up according to 
a model a perfect reproduction of a bird or a fish, 
but at the last lack utterly the power to make a 
live animal of the imitation. 

But all these joys of the heart those shut in 

21 



THE VAGABOND BOOK 

can share with the rover, and we beg of them, 
with a perfect appreciation of their losses and 
their deprivations, a more thorough devotion to 
the creed of the Vagabond, which shall enable 
them to wander far and wide through the earth 
without let or hindrance and with endless pleas- 
ure to themselves. 



LIFE'S HIGHWAY 

DUSTY down the valley way 
I The riband of the road, 
A long, brown streamer in the sun. 
Leads off from my abode. 

I sit, a loafer in the shade 

Before my house of clay, 
And wonder, wonder as I sit. 

Where leads that long highway. 



22 



THE WANDERLURE 

H, the wanderer heart is tugging strong 
At the leash that holds it fast, 
And a luring wile is the siren smile 
Of the summer slipping past. 



O 



The hills are calling near and far, 
The highway stretches brown, 

The woodland's show of flaming glow 
Draws rover hearts from town. 

Come break your tether, heart of mine. 

Let's out and steal away. 
There's rampant life in the joy that's rife 

With the sun of an autumn day. 



RIVERS 

IN one of his novels, Henry Seton Merriman 
likened the character of people living along 
the greater streams to the streams them- 
selves. This classification is not inept and might 
be carried even further; if one does but walk be- 
side a stream, there is an unconscious tendency 
on the part of the thoughts to resemble the 
stream. 

One does not wander down a turbulent moun- 
tain torrent, the mind placidly contemplating the 
peaceful qualities of human nature, or dwelling 
upon the calm, unruffled serenity of a June day, 
nor does one stray beside a smooth, deep, slug- 
gish river with grass and flower-lined banks, to 
recline thereon and dream of battles, murders and 
direful calamities. 

It is not that a person deliberately says when 
starting out to roam along the quiet stream, 
''Now I will fill my mind with thoughts of peace 
and piety." The effect of the stream is as un- 
conscious as it is certain. 

Choose then a stream befitting the mood in 



RIVERS 

which you would be placed. There is no stroll 
more nearly ideal than that which combines the 
charm of the most favored upland road with the 
near proximity of some small brook which adds 
its voice to those of the other denizens of nature 
clamoring for attention. 

A noisy stream is a companion which pleases 
as much as a noisy human companion disturbs. 
It joins you and chatters incessantly for a hun- 
dred yards, then rambles off by itself to explore 
a willow copse across the narrow valley from the 
highway. When it returns to the road, it may 
be with its waters turned turbid by the cattle 
fording its shallows, or it may bring a surface 
yellow dotted with a scattering of leaves, telling 
the swan song of the willows. 

It broadens into shallows where its voice is 
silenced, or it narrows to a breadth to be crossed 
at a leap, and rushes through the miniature 
chasm with its best imitation of a roaring moun- 
tain torrent. 

With all its profounder influences upon the 
emotions and with all its more forceful inspira- 
tion, walking by a big stream has not the attrac- 
ts 



THE VAGABOND BOOK 

tion that one finds by the Httle waters. The fas- 
cinations of the Httle river are as countless as the 
bubbles in its foaming caldrons, and the variety 
of its phases is beyond the withering power of 
time. No month of the twelve but brings its 
particular charm to evidence in some peculiar 
manner, and month in and month out, there 
exists in the walk on its bank an irresistible 
attraction. 

The big rivers for the strenuous, but the little 
rivers for the Vagabond. 



T 



THE RIVER PATH 

HERE'S a path beside the river. 

Winding through the willow copse, 
Where I love to walk in autumn 
Ere the season's curtain drops. 



On far hillsides beech and maple 
Touched by early, nipping frost, 

Have their brown and scarlet jackets 
To the boisterous breezes tossed. 
26 



THE RIVER PATH 

Still the willow leaves are clinging, 

Latest foliage of fall, 
Shading yet my river pathway 

Underneath the osiers tall. 

On the wimpling water's surface 
Where the sallow sunlight glints. 

Float the leaves from woodlands stolen 
By the Wind, of thieves the prince. 

All along the river edges 

Verdure's turned to brown and gray, 
Rustling through the drying sedges 

Autumn's low voiced breezes play. 

Nowhere sweeter walk or rarer 
Than my path beside the stream. 

There I love to walk in autumn, 
There to loiter and to dream. 



THE ROAD 

THERE is the highway; you may love it or 
you may scoff at it, I know not your habit, 
but whatever you do, follow it day in and 
day out. Ride over it, drive over it or walk over 
it; best of all is the walking, for the true Vaga- 
bonds are the walkers. 

The bicycle as a fad has passed into oblivion, 
poor overdone bicycle craze! How it kept thou- 
sands of riders scurrying across the country hith- 
er and yon just for the sake of piling up the miles 
on a cyclometer ! But how it enabled, how it still 
enables those of us who love outdoors to bring 
the hitherto distant parts near to our homes! 
How it stimulated to added charm the old way- 
side inn where it is so enjoyable to halt for a 
lunch or supper and rest on its wide verandah in 
the broad content of the hour after the meal ! 

What a host of pleasures the bicycle renewed, 
rescued from boyhood or girlhood, pleasures 
which have not followed the fad into oblivion! 
The road itself exhibits a charm which it never 
before possessed fo thousands who had ever been 

28 



THE ROAD 

mere house-ridden servers of Father Time. If the 
bicycle redeemed them from their slavery to four 
walls and dejection, though some of them have 
gradually fallen back into that slavery, yet many 
could not give up their outdoors. If afraid of 
fashion's decrees, vucy now automobile, golf, 
drive or walk, but indoors can no more satisfy. 

The road is still there with its fringe of maples, 
elms, fruit trees, hedge rows; of wild growing 
shrubbery or banks blossoming with an adorable 
variety, from the yellow-hearted bloodroot of 
earliest spring to the smoke-blue aster tufts of 
fall. 

As a nation we are persistent health seekers. 
We study patiently countless long treatises upon 
the prevention or cure of disease. We were never 
so well posted upon the methods for excluding 
germs from our systems; and first and foremost 
among the germicides is outdoors, fresh air, with 
its attendant diversions of the mind. 

There is the road. It lies brown and inviting 
before you, a clear cut way to health, leading 
down the perspective between borders of green, 
yellow and red ; bird and bud and blossom : bob- 

2C) 



THE VAGABOND BOOK 

o'links, ■ warblers and orioles ; daisies and butter- 
cups; with the smell of the June-time or the 
breath of the harvest fields filling the air. Winter 
closes it not, but ofYers the bracing, invigorating, 
hyper-oxygenated air and white stretching vistas, 
or brown, breeze-blown hillsides to call you forth 
to follow the sparrow and the chickadee. 

The road is there to be treated as your temper- 
ament dictates. Long may it find favor in your 
heart ! 



30 



TRAIL SONG 

HERE'S out on the open trail, my lass, 
With a heart for rain or shine! 
Here's out to race with wind in the face, 
To roam or rove at the wilding pace 
Where the weather thrills like wine! 

We'll follow the wind of the way, my lass, 

Where it chases a truant stream. 
We'll loaf along with a vagrant song. 
With the glow of life all thrilling strong 

And the future a vibrant dream. 

For what's a day or a year, my lass, 

But time for finding joy? 
We've naught to do, we crony two. 
With the Ship of Worry's crafty crew. 

We're free from all annoy. 

Then here's a song, a song, my lass, 

A song for the open trail ! 
We're off to seek the crimson streak 
That's sunk behind West Mountain's peak. 

And drink from freedom's grail. 

31 



THE LAND SAILOR 



c 



OME, fill my sails, you wastrel wind, 
And waft me o'er the fields, 
The golden fields, rich harvest lined 
With all that red earth yields. 



Come, blow me down the valley way 

Between the crimson hills, 
Where hardwoods make the landscape gay 

And nature's glad heart thrills. 

Blow, blow my craft where yellow leaves 
Swirl vagrant through the air. 

And blow me where the rustling sheaves 
Dot fields of stubble bare. 

For I would sail the autumn land 

While glow its radiant hues. 
With boat and breeze at my command, 

All down its length I'll cruise. 



32 



TRAVELERS 

TRAVELERS are of two classes, the real 
and the make believe. Usually the make 
believes have journeyed infinitely more 
miles than the real, but traveling is not a matter 
of distance. 

I know a man who has spent every winter in 
Egypt for years, and all he remembers of the 
country is that a native guide robbed him on one 
occasion of a pair of gold sleeve links. He is a 
make believe. I know another man who has 
never been out of his own county, but he knows 
every nook and corner of every locality that he 
ever visited. He knows at how many and what 
places the Beaverkill stream is dammed, how 
many roads and paths lead over the hills lying 
between Fall Clove and Terry Clove. He has 
seen things in detail and in such as he we find the 
real travelers. It is the old story of eyes and no 
eyes. 

Sometimes travel is for education, sometimes 
for enjoyment. Enjoyment is not dependent 
upon the number of miles traversed and neither 

33 



THE VAGABOND BOOK 

is education; nor does either depend upon the 
country through which one journeys. All de- 
pends simply upon the way in which one takes en- 
vironment and what the effect of new views and 
scenes may be upon the soul. 

In taking a pleasure trip do you spend its days 
in impatient waitings for arrival at its turning 
points? Does the anxiety to get to some place 
eclipse the joy of the journey there? Then you 
are not a Vagabond and traveling is but the 
wearying means to an unsatisfying end, which as 
soon as it is reached becomes merely one of the 
stepping stones to some goal yet farther distant. 

Do you travel for the journey? Do you set 
out on a pleasure trip with a sense of the keenest 
enjoyment of every minute of the way? Would 
you prefer a journey in an ox-cart to one on the 
vestibule limited in order that you might have a 
better opportunity to enjoy the world by the 
way ? Then you are a real traveler, a true nature 
lover and a member of the Vagabond Club. Life 
holds more joy for you in the pleasures of travel, 
though your means be never so small, than the 
private car and steam yacht class can ever com- 
pass. 

34 



SONG FOR MARCH 

To be a make-believe traveler is but a matter 
of dollars and cents. To be a real traveler is a 
matter of the heart's deepest desires and the 
imagination's capabilities, and those will go 
farthest whose love of gypsying carries their 
hearts farthest afield. 



SONG FOR MARCH 

SING ho ! Sing ho, for the sleet and snow ! 
For the stormy March and the winds that 
blow 
From north and south, now high, now low. 

Or chill or warm ! 
Oh, March is the month of months for me ; 
Its south winds set old winter free, 
And tell of the spring time soon to be. 
With all its charms. 

Sing ho for March on the sea's bleak shore, 
Where the bracing breezes evermore 
Blow up from the ocean, bearing before 
The salt sea spray ! 
35 



THE VAGABOND BOOK 

Sing ho for March among the hills ; 
Melting snows filling the ice-rimmed rills, 
Streams rushing madly past meadows and mills 
Day after day! 

Sing ho for the roughest month of all, 
When shrill o'er the tempest sounds the call 
Of the crow from forest tree-top tall, 

Telling of spring ! 
And ho for the waning winter days 
When the lingering north wind's cold delays 
April's coming and chills the sun's red rays ! 

Oh, March is king! 



36 



DECEMBER WALKING 

YOU who have made a fleeting fad of some 
outdoor sport, have taken up for a time a 
form of recreation which has proved more 
beneficial than all the medicine the druggist ever 
compounded for your chronic ailments. The only 
trouble with such a fad was that it was nothing 
more, and while fads may do much good while 
they last, they are too short of life. A fad, though 
it may prove as stimulating as wine without the 
subsequent depression, is after all only a fad. 

As the disciple of no ology, cult or creed except 
that of Vagabondia, I am not going to write tech- 
nically of the proper motions to be made in walk- 
ing in order to get the most appetite for the least 
number of miles. I simply feel inclined to tell 
those who wish to know, that there is much in 
December air that appeals strongly enough to 
draw some people out to walk in it day after day 
until they come up to Christmas with a feeling of 
exhilaration that makes it a pleasure to look for- 
ward to the remaining months of cold. 

The kind of December walking that I like and 

37 



THE VAGABOND BOOK 

that every walker by choice Hkes is not the shiver- 
ing, shuddering, grumbling, be-mittened, ulstered 
and fur-buried shamble that takes one only so far 
as the cold can be kept out by main force and then 
rushes to the nearest radiator. It is not the 
nervous sprint that sets out to walk to a certain 
point and back and speeds along cringing at the 
bluff heartiness of the brisk air, hurrying to the 
fire as soon as possible with a great sigh of relief 
that the task is finished. 

No one can gain any pleasure from such walk- 
ing, and there is apt to be but little benefit from it. 

December is not as cold as it is painted. As a 
rule there is no permanent snow in most of our 
land until about Christmas time. Oftentimes 
there are lingering days of the good St. Martin's 
summer as late as the opening of December, and 
Whittier himself gives us a picture like this, in 
'The Last Walk in Autumn" : 

"Along the river's summer walk 
The withered tufts of asters nod; 
And trembles on its arid stalk 
The hoar plume of the goldenrod; 



38 



DECEMBER WALKING 

And on a ground of sombre fir 
And azure studded juniper 
The silver birch its buds of purple shows, 
And scarlet berries tell where bloomed the sweet wild rose." 

With such a picture, one might expect to find 
early December filled with the haze of late autumn 
and perhaps even its erratic warmth and its subtle 
spirit of Vagabondia. 

For most of us the ground will be frozen hard 
before December appears. The fields will be 
almost as hard as the highways and the walking 
will be good anywhere. No dust and no mud, 
the marshy spots covered and the little streams 
bordered with crystal, though still running clear 
and musical, their tones more silvery than ever 
in the summer days. 

There is a sharp ring to the sound of the heels 
on the pavement as one starts out on a December 
afternoon. The air is good to breathe and makes 
a person involuntarily take those long, deep 
breaths that are the enemy of every sort of 
microbe that has been invented (for I believe that 
as many microbes are invented as are discovered). 

Even just after midday the shadows are 

39 



THE VAGABOND BOOK 

stretching far to the north and the sun seems 
ready to set behind the southern hills in spite of 
the tradition that it always disappears in the west. 
The shade trees on the avenues loom lace-like 
against the gray sky, shaking an occasional leaf 
in defiance of the king of cold. Along the north- 
ern side of the street where the shelter of the 
buildings keeps the wind away, one might prom- 
enade at leisure, coat unbuttoned, and think that 
the sunshine was that of a spring day. However, 
December is no time for loiterers, and loitering is 
no fit occupation for December. 

Leave the paved streets and strike for the coun- 
try lane leading off between fields where flocks of 
Christmas turkeys pick their stately way about 
amid the ruins of the summer verdure. 

How near the hills are and how clear they stand 
up there against the sky, their wrinkled brows 
frowning down at the river as it glitters away to- 
ward the sun and disappears in a blaze of light. 
Not a hill now that can conceal the skeleton in its 
family closet. All is exposed to view, from the 
smallest rock to the highest ledge and the crook- 
edest tree. There is a softness of color tone, 



40 



DECEMBER WALKING 

particularly in the early twilight hours, that never 
shows on the summer hills. The inky blues and 
the marvelous grays and browns of barren De- 
cember are as artistic as ever are the greens of 
other seasons. Theirs is a strength that is more 
than mere beauty. 

One wanders across the orchard toward the hill 
pasture with an appreciation of the gnarled and 
knotted apple trees which largely enhances their 
value in the scheme of the landscape's beauty. 
Overhead there are plentiful birds' nests to remind 
one of the denizens of the summer orchard, and 
under foot there is a carpet the solid color of the 
dead grass, through which the field mice are 
gleaning after the last of the larger harvesters. 

One detects a feeling of snow in the atmosphere 
and if the day be dull there is an involuntary re- 
verting of the mind to "Snow Bound" and *The 
sun that brief December day rose cheerless over 
hills of gray." Even the person who dislikes 
snow might almost be reconciled to its discom- 
forts for the sake of that beautiful poem. 

In walking up the hill, what a picture the valley 
and the hills across make in the thin sunshine with 

41 



THE VAGABOND BOOK 

the curling smoke arising from the farmhouse 
chimneys! What a stillness there is! A hound 
up there in the woods bays loudly in pursuit of a 
rabbit, or of Br'er Fox maybe. Voices come up 
out of the valley as one goes higher. Every dis- 
tant sound adds to the stillness. 

The roar of the water in the river as it flows 
over the dam fills the air as it never seems to do in 
summer. The sounds are like those in a big empty 
hall. Noises that would not be heard when it is 
full reverberate from side to side with amazing 
clearness when it is empty. 

One feels so much more like walking in De- 
cember. The air is so full of vigor and there is 
such an utter absence of the tired feeling that 
haunts the unambitious during the dog days. It 
is no effort to keep right on up the hill without 
halting to get breath. However keen the air, 
with the hands protected and perhaps the ears, 
and a thick jacket for facing the wind, none, 
unless it may be old age, need be fearful of Jack 
Frost. 

There's a cow-path leads out through the 
grove where the feet stir up the leaf carpet and 

42 



DECEMBER WALKING 

one may pause for a moment to speculate upon 
the fancy of Oliver Wendell Holmes' "Cracked 
Teacup," who said that the trees were naught 
but great subterranean creatures with their tails 
waving in the air. 

The December walker will find much to medi- 
tate upon and will be a more thoughtful person 
than the summer rambler. One who thinks that 
there is a monotonous sameness to outdoor De- 
cember will, upon closer investigation, discover 
the fallacy of such a notion. 

This when the ground is bare; and when the 
snow comes ! — 

"A brightness which outshines the morning, 
A splendor brooking no delay, 
Beckons and tempts my feet away. 

"I leave the trodden village highway 

For virgin snow-paths glimmering through 
A jewelled elm-tree avenue." 

When the walk has gone far enough, if there 
is another way home, go that way. It ought to 
be the first rule in walking never to return by the 
same way one goes. If you have started out at a 

43 



THE VAGABOND BOOK 

moderate pace you will feel fresh and energetic, 
and as you near home you will unconsciously in- 
crease your gait until you will come down the 
home stretch at a good smart clip, warm and 
glowing outside and in and rejoicing that you 
had the sense to go walking rather than spend the 
afternoon hugging the fire. 



WINTER SONG 

HERE'S out on the hilltop bold and bare 
Where the bracing breezes blow! 
There's a frosty edge on the wintry air. 
Exhilaration keen and rare 
That sets the heart aglow. 

Over the crest the snow lies deep. 

Over the brow of the hill. 
Down below the forests sleep 
Blanketed well on the sloping steep 

*Neath a snow sheet white and chill. 



44 



WINTER SONG 

A song, a song for the galloping gale 

That sweeps the summit clear 
And drives the mass of icy shale 
Into the pines whose every wail 

Fills timid souls with fear ! 

There's that in the winter's whistling wind 

That stirs dead hearts to life, 
And energy and health you'll find 
In the breath of the breeze that's rough yet kind, 

That's keen as the surgeon's knife. 



45 



THE WINTER CAMP 



D 



EEP buried in the winter drifts 

While wild the wind is wailing, 
While through each chink the snow sand 
sifts, 
Stands the winter camp unquailing. 

It shivers not with the icy blast 

That raids the pines' dominion. 
Its sturdy frame has strength to last, 

Held firm by thole and pinion. 

Without, the winter sets its teeth 

And girds itself for revels. 
Wild moans the gale the pines beneath. 

Across the woodland levels. 

Within, the wide-mouthed fireplace glares, 

A hungry, hot-breathed dragon. 
While storm bound hunters drown their cares 

In draughts from brimming flagon. 



46 



THERE IS A PLACE 

I KNOW a place toward which the footsteps 
of the Vagabond, having once turned, always 
return. It is not a wonderful place. The 
places that appeal to one along life's pathway are 
not the wonderful places. This is just a long 
slope of the bank from the road to the river, 
smooth in the main, with a few rocks jutting out 
here and there, while at the water's edge are a 
half dozen hemlocks, tall and straight, through 
which a pictured bit of the river gleams with a 
brightness sevenfold greater for the darkness of 
the evergreen frame. The stream makes a long, 
graceful, willow-hedged sweep down the valley, 
with the western hills showing in the background. 
In the opposite direction a green reaching vista 
ends in Mt. Utsayantha's cloud-capped summit, 
while directly across the river the perspective 
shows the sinuous valley of the Elk Creek. 

In a general way that is all. You cannot see 
why the place is so especially attractive. If we 
were to go there together, I could not point out 

47 



THE VAGABOND BOOK 

wherein lies its individual charm, though you 
would at once admit its presence. 

There is a wonderful profusion of such spots 
throughout the world, though many of them 
must ever remain undiscovered. You doubtless 
know the exact location of many of them your- 
self; spots which impress themselves upon the 
mind at sight, though they lack much or all of 
the grandeur or glory of the show places which 
are visited and admired indiscriminately by the 
Make Believes who think themselves travelers be- 
cause of having journeyed to far countries. That 
class would fail utterly in the effort to name a sin- 
gle one of such places as are known to those of 
the gypsy heart. 

There is a little bridge over a stream near 
UAssomption (some thirty-odd miles east of 
Montreal) where one would sit for hours and 
gaze at the spire in the village as it shows above 
the trees, with not a building in sight, while the 
black waters of the river rush along past the 
high reed-grown bank, and the bell of a native 
cart tinkles somewhere down the road. 

There is a bit of shore near Marblehead where 

48 



THERE IS A PLACE 

the ocean pulls one to its edge to loaf along the 
rocks for hours at a stretch with no definite con- 
sciousness of the particular charm that makes up 
the attraction of that individual place. 

A little piece of the tow-path of the Chesapeake 
and Cumberland canal, at one of the points where 
it skirts the edge of the Potomac river, detains 
the Vagabond as does no other spot from Har- 
per's Ferry to the sea. 

Many are the little pictures of nature which 
surpass the magnificent ones even as the Bear- 
camp water excels in beauty the Mississippi. 
Beauty is a matter of quality, not quantity. 

A review of such representative spots treasured 
up in the mind of another Vagabond would locate 
them in totally different places from my own. No 
one vicinity can claim a monopoly of the beauty 
spots upon the face of Mother Nature. They 
are scattered from Dan to Beersheba. Every 
Vagabond shall have his own, the mental visions 
of which, in the absence from those places, shall 
be caressed tenderly by the homesick heart as they 
carry the mind back to the hours spent in their 
enjoyment. The store of mental treasures laid 

49 



THE VAGABOND BOOK 

up by the Vagabond is beyond comparison with 
the pile of fool's gold in the miser's strong- 
box. 

Such treasures as those of the gypsy heart af- 
ford a pleasure in their mere possession that can 
never come to the miser with the glitter of his 
aureate hoard. Gold is but gold. Its value is 
counted in mere figures, while happy memories 
know neither unit nor limit of value. 



I 



REST YE HERE 

N the edge of Windham wood 

Where the pine trees tower and taper, 
Where their fragrance, clean and good, 
Rises like a censer's vapor. 



There's a place for vagrant souls 
In the waning day to linger, 

While the sun the shaggy boles 
Touches with vermilion finger. 



50 



BY LOTUS LAKE 

Listen ! Hear the breezes croon, 
Sighing to the pine trees, singing 

Soft a mellow, rhythmic rune. 

Peace to life's wayfarers bringing. 

Outdoor rovers, journey's end 
Lies within this piney cloister. 

Here pray rest while shadows blend. 
Let the gay world romp and roister ! 



BY LOTUS LAKE 

EHIND the slopes of Windham wood 

The autumn sun sinks low ; 
Its disk of fire as red as blood 
Flames up like blazing tow. 



B 



The hilltop's shadow steals across 
The gleam of Lotus lake ; 

A deep, mysterious, mirrored gloss 
The evening waters take. 



SI 



THE VAGABOND BOOK 

From smooth reflecting depths shines back 

The sun's red ball of fire. 
A golden path its dazzling track 

To the home of dear desire. 

The woodland's gay kaleidoscope 

Of swiftly changing hue, 
From crimson maples on the slope 

To birchen retinue, 

Betokens one more passing year 

With all its golden chain 
Of links of hope and links of fear. 

Of links of joy or pain. 

Come rain or shine, come foul or fair 
O'er Windham's wooded way; 

Come breeze caress, or wintry air 
Lash Lotus lake to spray ; 

It's one to us, the dark or bright ; 

Year follows year, day turns to night, 
Life passes, grave or gay. 



THE SPIRIT 

THE fellowship of outdoors brings together 
as motley an assortment of bedfellows as 
politics itself. 

You who love nature, who glory in her beauties 
at times of the year when the uncalled think her 
moulting and unlovely; you know how often in 
your rambles you have come upon some uncouth 
son of the soil admiring just the beauties which 
you were congratulating yourself that you ap- 
preciated because of a superior and inner poetical 
intelligence which at first you would feel unwil- 
ling to share with the unaesthetic stranger. 

Nature is lavish in her display of charms, and 
love for her grows by what it feeds upon. The 
appreciation which is the exception among 
strangers to her glory is more nearly the rule 
among those who are her constant associates. 

It may be that the uncouth one is possessed of 
a soul as truly poetical, and he may be as genuine 
a Vagabond as you who at first assumed a pity 
for his ignorance. At all events the real Vaga- 

53 



THE VAGABOND BOOK 

bond, when he recognizes in another the love of 
nature which imbues his own soul, will forthwith 
extend to him the right hand of good fellowship, 
regardless of any external appearances of unfit- 
ness. 

The spirit of Vagabondia knows no class dis- 
tinction. It locates in the hearts of the highest 
or the humblest. The spark of subtle sympathy 
which flashes through a thousand hearts when 
comes the one touch of nature that makes the 
whole world kin, is conducted by the latent spirit 
of Vagabondia which moves each heart to little 
or great emotion in proportion as it is slightly or 
fully dominated by that spirit. 



54 



s 



ROAD SONG 

ING ho, my lass, for the dusky road 

That stretches sunset way! 
Sing ho for the east-bound path of morn, 

A writhing riband gray ! 



And ho, sing ho for the quivering track. 

The highway hot of noon ! 
Each one's a path for a wanderer heart 

To rove or late or soon. 

We'll out and foot it down the days 
Through weather fit for kings; 

With ho for the open road, my lass, 
And ho for the joy it brings ! 



A 



THE SPIRIT 

CROSS the sea of daisies roll 

Billows of white. From knoll to knoll 
They surge above the meadow's shoal. 



And break against the gray stone walls 
Like ocean surf on its rocky thralls. 
They shimmer where the sunlight falls 

Like fields of deep December snow. 
Each floweret tosses to and fro, 
A dainty fraction of the show, 

Or listening to the lover breeze 
Whispering o'er the foamy leas, 
Bows her head before his pleas. 

Oh, billowing, dazzling daisy field, 
'Tis but a reflection of life you yield 
With surface fair and depths concealed. 



THE TRAPPER 

OF all the thousand and one delights that 
the boy brought up in the city cannot 
know, one of the chief is that of trapping 
the fur-bearing animals in the fall. What normal 
boy who grew up within reach of woods or waters 
where such animals were to be found ever failed 
to feel the desire to trap them in the months when 
their fur thickens for the coming of winter ? 

There are boys who never care for any of the 
outdoor things that other boys love. They grow 
up to be a matinee sort of men who condemn foot- 
ball as brutal and who frequent afternoon teas 
and clubs on the days when all the sporting world 
is on tiptoe as to the outcome of some big inter- 
collegiate battle. 

Of such boys I would not tell in writing of 
trappers. Nor would I write of the boys who 
read dime novels and glow with a desire to be 
"Trapper Dick, the Human Catamount," or 
something equally bloodthirsty. I mean just the 
normal, every-day sort of lads who compose the 



THE VAGABOND BOOK 

great majority of the boy population in any small 
town or countryside. 

When the streams attain their autumnal crystal 
clearness and the wooded hillsides shimmer red 
and yellow up and down the valleys with a golden 
fringe by the water-ways, then on a day the 
schoolboy bethinks himself of the traps in the 
attic and a need of spending money, and a course 
of subtle logic connects the two in his mind with 
the result that after school the same day the 
traps are brought out and made ready for use, 
and with a bunch of forked sticks he sets out 
along the bank of the stream to look for muskrat 
holes. 

Along the muddy banks he pries and peers and 
wherever he finds a hole he pushes a stick into the 
bank through the ring in the end of the trap's 
chain, with the trap set well up into the hole 
under water. All the pleasure that anticipation 
can offer is in the work and as he goes along his 
mind is filled with plans for the expenditure of 
the money that he is as sure of possessing as was 
the milkmaid before she upset the bucket from 
her crown. 

58 



THE TRAPPER 

A good deal of solid comfort goes with work 
of this sort for a boy. He finds nut trees with the 
prickly burrs split open by the frost and he fills 
his pockets from the ground for use in school the 
next day. Something to eat in school is the boy's 
delight, even if it is nothing more than beech- 
nuts or thorn-apples. He finds apple trees too 
by the riverside where the best fall pippins are 
waiting to be taken, and when the traps are all 
set and a bit of time yet remains before dusk, he 
lies flat on his back under a big willow and 
munches and munches while he meditates on the 
things that fill a boyish mind — ^things that are 
deeper than much that occupies the maturer in- 
tellect. 

The following morning finds the youngster 
an early visitor at the river. Trap after trap is 
visited with never a sign of a catch, unless one 
that is simply sprung is a sign, until in the last 
one a foot is found which the luckless muskrat 
has gnawed off to set himself free. 

That one foot is enough to buoy up the hope 
of the young trapper for another day, and after 
school that night each trap is again visited to 

59 



THE VAGABOND BOOK 

make sure that everything is aU right. The 
second morning two muskrats are the reward of 
dihgence, and the boy is half an hour late to 
school, and smells most woefully as a result of his 
work. 

All day long through the droning of lessons 
he is planning his trapping campaign, and by time 
for afternoon dismissal has evolved an idea which 
he intends to carry out at once. 

There must be a shanty for headquarters and 
it must be built in a secluded spot, as wild as pos- 
sible. As soon as school is out he gets to work. 
The hut must be arranged for keeping the pelts, 
with a fireplace to keep a fellow warm on frosty 
mornings when there is much work to be done 
and mother objects to the bold trapper's presence 
near the kitchen stove. 

A heavily willowed spot by a bend in the river 
makes a favorable site and there the boy begins 
the erection of a shanty of odd boards and tim- 
bers purloined from no one knows v/here. A boy 
who has to grow up without knowing the fun of 
a shanty will never know half that makes youth 
happy. To be the proud owner of a shanty is 
more than to own a donkey cart and patronize 
60 



THE TRAPPER 

the other boys, or in later years to own a touring 
car when no other business man on the block can 
afford one. 

Inside the shanty with its stove-pipe chimney, 
its four feet of height and its dirt floor are hung 
the skins as they are obtained, and here the boy 
hides various treasured trophies which are not 
safe from a marauding mother at home. Here 
too the other boys who enjoy his friendship are 
allowed to gather on Saturdays and steep in the 
smudge of the fire and smoke corn silk and sweet 
fern cigarettes. 

After a week trapping gets to be a business 
that is not all pleasure, and it is then that the boy 
shows in a measure the stuff that he is made of. 
He either gives up the game and calls it square, 
with the shanty to play in, or he gets down to 
trapping in earnest, shifting his traps around, up 
and down the stream day by day, until the 
weather gets so cold that the river freezes and he 
has to give up for the year. 

When the season ends he has at all events the 
benefit of a gained knowledge of outdoors and 
outdoor things, from the probabilities of the 

6i 



THE VAGABOND BOOK 

weather to the habits of the semi-amphibious ani- 
mals whose fur he covets. 

In all likelihood he will get about fifty cents' 
worth of furs, for the hide of the muskrat is far 
from being a valuable article of commerce. If 
an occasional mink gets into the traps, the results 
will improve vastly, and if the boy goes up on the 
hills and tries successfully for foxes (as he is 
not likely to do) he will make quite a neat sum 
for holiday spending. 

Often the trapping venture is a partnership 
affair of two or even three lads, in which case 
there is apt to be trouble. One owns the boat and 
the other the traps, with the result that the boy 
with the boat will claim that he is contributing a 
share of greater value than the traps, which will 
at first entitle him to skin the rats and later, by 
the same application of principle, will exempt him 
from that task. 

In any case quarrels are inevitable and may 
result in a dissolution of partnership or in a 
clearing of the atmosphere by a scrap, which is 
as a rule, the quickest and surest way of bringing 
about an understanding. If partnership squab- 

62 



THE TRAPPER 

bles among older men could be settled as simply, 
most of the business of the legal fraternity would 
be wiped out. 

Trapping does a boy no end of good. It would 
do anybody good. It gets one nearer to nature 
and that is what people need, though they are 
better acquainted with the woods and fields now 
than for many decades past. The boy who takes 
to trapping and hunting and fishing naturally is 
made up on the right formula, but the boy who 
dislikes the outdoors will never be in touch with 
the great things of life, for he is not in touch with 
the greatest. 



63 



WHEN AUTUMN CALLS 



s 



OFT southern breezes blowing by, 
Low rustling through the corn ; 
Pipes cicada loud and high 
Upon his tiny horn. 



The bluish asters line the way, 
A long, thin, smoky cloud, 

While o'er the wall, a mantle gray. 
Spreads virgin's bower its shroud. 

With colors flecked, the hills of fall 

Invite the vagabond 
To roam where forests tower tall, 

Or by the willowed pond. 

Cast off the cloak of carking care, 
Fling wide your worries too. 

Out, gypsy heart, abroad to fare 
E'er autumn days are through ! 



64 



AN ABDICATION 

INDIAN wigwams in the corn-lands, 
Rows and rows of ragged shocks ; 
Fields all polka-dotted yellow 
With the pumpkins' golden blocks : 

Pastures brown with greening ribbons 
Where the springs come straggling down, 

Meadows fading, gray the woodlands, 
Summer throws aside her crown ; 

Casts aside her royal purple. 

Folds her robes all somber grown ; 

Silent, shadow-like and weary, 
Abdicates a tottering throne. 



65 



GYPSYING 

THERE is the theory of the countless joys 
of gypsying as it is considered in the ab- 
stract by people who would never think of 
sleeping under the stars, and there is the practice 
which is enjoyable only to those who have the 
roving spirit, the outdoor love that will not down. 

Any one can sit in the sun of an early October 
afternoon when outdoors is at its best and say 
"What would I not give to be a gypsy these days, 
with no responsibility save to roam where nature 
seemed most beautiful!" Not every one though 
would really desire to be a vagabond, with a 
trust to luck and Providence for food and bed to 
come at the right time. 

In the autumn days when the sham Vagabond 
talks of gypsying and its manifest charms, the 
true gypsy hearted one is on the road. Nothing 
but the direst necessity will keep the heart Vaga- 
bond from the road when September comes. 

Do you remember the little verse, 

"Under the tree 
When fire outdoors burns merrily, 
There the witches are making tea." 
66 



GYPSYING 

Does such a fragment appeal to you? Does it 
stay with you for days and return to your mind 
with persistent frequency, drawing you away 
from the conventional toward the freedom of in- 
dividual creed and doctrine, toward the great 
wide outdoor world with its welcome for all? 
Does the quotation cause to arise in your mind's 
eye a vivid picture of the edge of an early autumn 
wood, with a bright fire burning briskly under 
the darkest tree, and in your heart a desire to be 
part of the picture? 

Such things perhaps do not appeal with the 
same force to all gypsy hearts, but what pleases 
one rarely fails to win a portion of the love of all 
the brethren of the fraternity of the open air. 
Exceptions are few to the rules that would be 
laid down to define the desires of the Vagabond. 
All normal mankind loves nature outdoors — 
autumn foliage, hills and rivers, woodland and 
meadow. Most people love these things in a 
general, abstract way. The gypsy heart loves 
winter outdoors well ; spring it hails with a poef s 
joy; summer is a season of luxurious idling, and 
the autumn is welcomed with a very lover's ardor. 

67 



THE VAGABOND BOOK 

Then the foot will not be still; it must out and 
down the brown highway to the tune of the 
mellow breezes in the trees as certainly as the 
dancer's foot must beat time to the music's 
rhythm. 

When the early twilights fall, with their myr- 
iad beauties of rose-streaked sunsets and hill- 
sides of gold and crimson and purple; when the 
evening comes with a softness of horizon outlines 
that the other seasons miss, how can one endure 
four walls ? Outdoors is home ; indoors a prison. 

But after all no one can be told of these things 
and made a Vagabond by any secret rites or oc- 
cult process. The gypsying joy is instinctive and 
comes like the poet's inspiration or the artist's 
temperament. You are a gypsy heart or you are 
one of the larger proportion who laugh at such 
enthusiasts. You are as you are. If you can- 
not understand, be content with the things that 
Providence meant should content you. 



68 



A 



GYPSY INVITATION 

WAY with your wealth, it fetters the heart, 
Come Hve from hand to mouth ! 
Come Hve with our band, our vagabond 
clan 
And roam the north and south ! 

There's never a wind or never a stream 

With sunshine bright aglare, 
There's never a hill and never a vale 

But ours their beaut}^ rare. 

WeVe here for a night and gone in a day. 

There's naught that can restrain. 
Our journey lies to ends o' the earth. 

Life's cares are our disdain. 

We're gypsies and rovers; home is the world, 

We're free to come or to go. 
Here's for the life of the open road 

And the wandering to and fro ! 



69 



THE ROVER HEART 

VER the hills and far away 

The wind of the west is winging; 
Out where the summer greens grow gray 
Songs of the fall are singing. 



O 



Raucus the call of the craven crow 

Across the fields of stubble; 
Silver the siren notes that flow 

Where autumn brooklets bubble. 

Plaintive and shrill, the noontide heat 

Is pierced with locust's treble, 
And lakeside waves with lilting beat 

Roll up o'er sand and pebble. 

The mellow, golden harvest time. 
With glowing, blowing weather. 

Is turning hearts to raptured rhyme 
While wandering together. 

Then out, my soul, just you and I, 

We're crony two for roaming! 
Ecstatic joys will hover by 

Through gleaming and through gloaming. 



70 



FELLOWSHIP 

LONELINESS is good. The society of 
self, if self be the right sort of a soul, is 
good. The fellowship of kindred souls is 
better. Loneliness is desirable only in compara- 
tively small quantities, but fellowship of congen- 
ial spirits knows no limit of desirability. 

Fellowship for the Vagabond must be fellow- 
ship of the Vagabond. Two to share the out- 
doors makes the share of neither a whit the less 
but rather more. 

The perfection of congenial spirit is found, not 
where two lifelong companions of mutual regard 
and identical tastes join hands for the trail, but 
where man finds in the heart of woman all that 
he found in the heart of that boon companion, 
and the love of woman beside. 

When the nature lover, the outdoor worship- 
per, finds one who will share his every emotion 
and feel with him the great force of nature's at- 
traction drawing him out to wander down the 
days of beauty through the autumn's shining and 
blowing, then will come life's perfection. 

71 



J 



THE VAGABONDS 

UST we two across the world, 
Phyllis, you and I, 
Straying wide from ocean side 
To hills that kiss the sky; 



Wandering far as vagabonds, 
From sea to singing sea, 

Hand in hand adown the land 
Roving glad and free. 

Phyllis, yours the golden heart. 

Yours the nature wild; 
Of the over-blue a daughter true. 

Rare heart, fair heart child. 

Phyllis mine, the beautiful, 
Ours the world to roam. 

Where the night puts day to flight. 
There we make our home. 

Gypsy vagrants, best we love 

Roving like the wind. 
No certain aim we ever claim 

But wander unconfined. 

72 



THE ART OF LOAFING 

Astart at morn's first dancing ray, 

We strike the dew-damp pike, 
Swing along with laugh and song 

And choose the way we like. 

There's peaceful rest at any time 

When weary with the way 
And your loving touch that means so much 

To keep me blithe and gay. 

Just we two, O Phyllis mine, 

And no one else beside. 
For us all strife fades out of life ; 
The world is wander-wide. 



THE ART OF LOAFING 

LOAFING is an art which properly applied 
means an economy of time and a wise 
prodigality of happiness. 
To many the term is merely a synonym for 
laziness and inanition, but loafing as an art is 
not a simple withholding of exertion, allowing 

73 



THE VAGABOND BOOK 

time to spend its force in a fruitless, unharnessed 
onrush; it is idleness with an object. 

Idleness is the suspension of effort; vagrancy 
is being conspicuously idle by effort, but the fine 
art of loafing is the blissful relaxation of muscle 
and mind under the benign influence of the drift- 
ing sense. This sense, to those possessing it, is 
instinctive and intuitive — a sixth sense, rare and 
precious, to be treasured by its possessors. 

Simple idleness is but a waiting for an inclina- 
tion. When the inclination comes it is welcomed, 
for waiting was ever a wearisome task. If the 
inclination be evil the chances for its adoption are 
the greater, for when was an evil inclination ever 
met and combated by a more attractive good in- 
clination? Aimless idleness gone wrong is crime 
if penniless, is indiscretion if moneyed. 

Diogenes was not the first loafer in history, but 
he was one of the best. There is a bare possibility 
of his having overplayed the part, but no one 
has ever done better. "Get out of my sunlight" 
was all he asked of any man. 

Every successful loafer must be a philosopher, 
but not every philosopher can be a loafer. Then 

74 



THE ART OF LOAFING 

too, perpetual loafing will be its own murderer. 
If Diogenes failed it was on this account. When 
his philosophy was overworked it failed him and 
made him in his latter days merely a harmless 
crank. 

A man need not be rich to loaf; in fact a rich 
man is rarely successful or accomplished in the 
art. Neither need a man be a pauper. Paradoxi- 
cal as it may seem, the artistic loafer may be 
genuinely ambitious and energetic. It is all a 
matter of that sixth sense. He must be a Vaga- 
bond at heart, and that keeps no man from work. 

Loafing is the conservator of energy, most val- 
uable and at the same time most agreeable. A 
New York business man, known to his associates 
as one of the keenest and most alert, leaves his 
office at three o'clock on a bright afternoon, takes 
the Cortlandt street ferry and gets out on the for- 
ward deck next the rail. As the green water 
sparkles at his feet, cares slip from his mind. He 
rests, and the harbor picture of rush and activity 
is but a background for the intimate details of the 
clear-cut mental vision which occupies his at- 
tention. 

75 



THE VAGABOND BOOK 

If a bootblack cries "Shine, sir?" he hears him 
not; if the other passengers jostle him, he knows 
it not. Instead he hears the rippling song of a 
brook under overhanging willows and birches 
with cat-birds in the branches; instead he feels 
a thrill along the rod with which he is whipping 
a mountain strip for speckled trout. Or it may 
be a very different dream, but a dream it is and 
a pleasant dream. 

"Ah," you say, "so the loafer is but a dreamer. 
Your Art of Loafing' is but castle building?" 
Well, if you will have it so, the loafer is a dream- 
er; but what dreams! 

They are not the dreams of power, ambition, 
wealth, glory ; in short, not dreams of the future, 
but of the past, the happy past with its trials and 
troubles omitted. With the mind at rest, a fair 
dream of past happiness effects the conservation 
of energy by producing the highest type of rest — 
except sleep. 

The worker who would also be a loafer must 
make every moment count. He condenses his 
work ; he wastes not his spare moments for they 
are the oases in each desert of labor. He values 

76 



THE ART OF LOAFING 

life and knows accordingly the value of time, the 
stuff of which life is made. He works better and 
with a clearer mind for his rest oases, each of 
which is in result but as a settling back and get- 
ting a fresh grip on his work. 

It is not custom that prevents woman from be- 
ing a good loafer. Eve had no customs to follow 
and yet it was she and not Adam who found the 
long, quiet happiness too fretful, too tiresome. 
Adam did not yield to Satan, but Eve followed 
the first evil inclination. 

Adam yielded to Eve? Of course; the man 
does not, nor ever did live in whom the dreaming 
instinct could not be killed by his wife if she had 
nothing to do but devote herself to tempting him 
— and preferred him with the romantic part of 
his nature dead. 

If you are a Vagabond and a dreamer, you 
know that you are misunderstood by your flint- 
headed, ultra - practical, keep-your-nose-to-the- 
grindstone friends who believe that rest is waste 
and that time exists only for work; but be inde- 
pendent in your determination to get out of life 
all the delicious joy of a proper Vagabondage. 

77 



THE HAZY DAYS 



WHEN the leaves are pointing upward 
Blown by wind from out the south, 
And the haze upon the hilltops 
Hints of coming days of drouth; 

Then, oh heart, we'll roam the highways 
Where the long, brown shadows lie; 

Follow through the mapled byway 
By the fields of waving rye. 

Who could e'er be low in spirit 

With the golden days at hand ? 
Lightfoot, in a shoe that's easy, 

Joys to roam the harvest land. 

Soul of gypsy, soul of rover, 

Soul of free heart vagabond 
Thrills to feel the red horizon 

Calling to the great beyond. 



78 



MY DREAM 

NO soul but dreams a perfect joy ; 
'Tis love or lurid gold, 
Or freedom from the world's annoy 
To roam earth's byways old. 

Whate'er another soul may dream, 

Mine be the vagrant path 
That winds beside the forest stream 

All strewn with aftermath 

Of ripened leaves and frost-split burrs; 

My joy's in wandering there 
While partridge drums and pheasant whirrs. 
While nature rustles when there stirs 

The Indian summer air. 



79 



NIGHT 

WHY are we afraid in the dark? We 
know plenty of people who claim that, 
light or dark, it is all the same to them 
so far as any fear is concerned. There are those 
of whom that is doubtless true, but most of us, 
when we get at the actual truth of the matter 
as we know it in our hearts, admit that we do 
not feel just the same to walk into that old, de- 
serted mill in the dark of midnight as we do to 
go there on a sunshiny afternoon. 

It is sad that we are so constituted as to feel 
that nervousness which ofttimes means appre- 
hension, fear or even terror. Doubtless many of 
us of the Vagabond spirit feel more at home in 
the night than others less willing to place their 
trust in Mother Nature. We have been drawn 
so strongly to try what our favorite walks might 
be like by the light of the moon, or the stars 
alone, that we have braved the plunge into the 
Stygian stream, to find that after the shivers of 
apprehension ceased, the reality failed to exhibit 
the terrors at which we had shuddered in antici- 
pation. 

How different nature is under the stars ! Gone 
80 



NIGHT 

are her gorgeous earthly pageants, even the spec- 
tacular autumn display of raiment quieting down 
to a shade no less dusk than that of the black 
pine woods. The river shows only the reflected 
glimmer of the stars and sings along on its way, 
unaccompanied save by the obligato of the wind 
ebbing and flowing through the willows. The 
imagination acquires full reign and peoples the 
darkness with a myriad impossible creatures to 
be slain only by the sword of matter-of-factness. 
Not all of the most practical, common-sense 
minds can master the distrust of darkness, but 
when one does reach a point where night is as 
free from terror as midday itself, there are many 
of the rarest pleasures to lead the believer forth 
•'when honest folk are abed." The music of the 
creatures of the night, from the katydid in the 
vines by the window to the hoot-owl in the pine 
woods, is full of charm, and with a congenial 
companion the favorite walk, taken in the dark- 
ness, becomes a real experience — a memory to be 
treasured up for the days when the almond tree 
shall flourish and the grasshopper shall be a 
burden. 

8i 



SOUTH WIND BLOW 

BLOW Up, blow Up, thou bold South Wind, 
Blow up from down the bay. 
Come sprinkle green and blushing bloom 
Where buried winter lies in tomb, 
Weave perfumed wreaths for May. 

Sift through the air the salt sea spray 

That spurs and stimulates 
The soul to wander far afield 
Where summer soon will sceptre wield, 

Where Joy for Soul awaits. 

Thy voice we welcome from afar ; 

Soon comes delight anear. 
The blowing of thy balmy breath 
The land will resurrect from death ; 

Now opens nature's year. 

Then come, blow on, thou bold South Wind, 

Thou herald of the spring. 
With all thy song of spuming sea 
Full glad w^e'll ever welcome thee. 

Of thee we'll sing and sing. 

82 



SHOW PLACES 

BY show places I mean such places as the 
railroads describe in their allurement 
pamphlets and summer boarding pros- 
pectuses. They are the points where sOjme won- 
der-inspiring natural spectacle is on exhibition ; 
where a magnificent display of past or present 
natural force is expected to awe one into silent 
admiration, or where some beautiful vista or 
wide-spreading panorama unfolds itself before 
the eyes. 

Such spots have all the effect that could be 
expected upon the true nature lovers who stand 
apart from the mob and view the falls of Niagara 
or the wonders of the Yellowstone in a spirit that 
fills their mind with thoughts as worthy of utter- 
ance as any of those of a Bryant or an Emerson, 
had they the language in which to utter them 
for the world. 

Of course the presence of a crowd of mere 
sight-seers detracts from the glory of any view 
spot. They know no respect for the beautiful or 
the sublime. They rush around in broods, chas- 

83 



THE VAGABOND BOOK 

ing each new spectacle that comes into sight as 
a bunch of feathering chicks chase a bug, and 
with about the same interest, namely, to get it, 
devour it and be ready for the next. 

There ought to be days set apart when the 
elect might have the glorious beauty spots of the 
world to themselves. 

How may one hope to enjoy such a view as 
that from Dufferin Terrace, Quebec, by moon- 
light, with a crowd of giggling, gabbling, love- 
making world-worshippers prancing up and 
down the boards at his back ? Though in the in- 
stance of other show places it might not be possi- 
ble to do the same, here one may wait for mid- 
night and the departure of the promenaders. 
Then stand by the high guard rail and look out 
upon such a picture as is worth journeying to see. 

Above the further end of the Terrace towers 
the citadel, the military guardian of the St. Law- 
rence. From beyond that, down past the point 
where Wolfe's army scaled the heights, comes the 
river, winding its sinuous length, past Levis with 
its cathedral spire — a graceful outline against 
the low, eastern moonlit sky, past Quebec's docks 

84 



SHOW PLACES 

and wharves, past the Isle d'Orleans (once Isle 
of Bacchus) and the Montmorency river and 
falls, past far Ste. Anne, disappearing finally in 
the blue of the distant, haze-enveloped Lauren- 
tian mountains of the north. Darkness rules the 
river channel below you with lights twinkling 
across from Levis' bluffs; the street lights glow 
in old Lower Quebec at your feet; the red and 
green signal lights on the ferry boats dart across 
the river ; some sailors strike up a song on a man- 
o'-war in the stream, and from Little Champlain 
street at the foot of the cliff floats up the music 
of girls' voices in an old love song. The slap, 
slap, slap of the water on the piers and ship sides, 
the creak of the cordage, the rattle of oars; all 
these are sounds that add to the witchery of the 
situation. 

The orchestra in the Chateau back of the Ter- 
race breaks into the "Home, Sweet Home" waltz 
and the moon rises from behind a long, straight 
bank of clouds. It is a scene like that of some 
play, and one almost expects to see it dissolve. 

What a host of such glorious places there are 
in the world ! How one regrets the brevity of a 

85 



THE VAGABOND BOOK 

life which keeps those who enjoy them most 
from enjoying a fair proportion of them! Such 
a regret is Hke that which one feels in the realiza- 
tion that our lives are too short to allow us to 
follow to any conclusion the workings of the 
destinies of nations. 



QUEBEC 

OH belated, super-sated 
Ones who're feeling overweighted 
With the city's heat and care. 
Get away from all the hustle 
Of the summer's dusty bustle, 
Seek the luring Northland's lair. 

Leave your mumming city strumming, 
With the torrid dog-days coming, 

Leave the worry and the wear. 
Try the calm of cool vacation. 
Rest your soul from toil's vexation. 

Get a whiff of God's pure air. 



86 



QUEBEC 

Pack your chattels; drop your battles; 
Leave the street where traffic rattles; 

Let the roar of commerce blare! 
There's a time in summer weather 
When it's wise to slip the tether 

And forsake the garish glare. 

There's a river all aquiver 

With the kiss the breezes give her 

As they touch her surface fair. 
She's the queen of northern waters, 
She's the belle of Neptune's daughters, 

Gay St. Lawrence, regal, rare. 

There's a veering cliff uprearing 
Haughty head above the gearing 

Of a masted harbor where 
Stands Quebec, the queenly, royal; 
Stands Quebec the ever loyal, 

Native born, with foreign air. 

Rough and jagged, rugged, ragged. 
Looms the promontory cragged; 

Looms the fortress high and bare. 
From its battlemented coping 
Downward to the eastward sloping. 

Bright the glinting house-roofs glare. 

87 



THE VAGABOND BOOK 

City bolder, quainter, older 

Than are some whose ruins moulder. 

Hers a charm to cancel care. 
Wander down her narrow alleys. 
From her Terrace view the valleys 

Of the rivers meeting there; 

Learn the histories, trace the mysteries 
Of chapels, convents and consistories; 

Each old building has its share. 
Nowhere brims Dame Fortune's beaker 
Fuller for the treasure seeker, 

Seeker after legends rare. 

As you wander you'll grow fonder 
Of the great Northland up yonder. 

Once you've seen its face so fair, 
Whether it through tears was smiling 
Or shone bright 'neath skies beguiling, 

Ever will it beckon there. 



S8 



HOSPITALITY 

HOSPITALITY is the welcome that makes 
you feel that they want you there. Old- 
fashioned hospitality usually ceases with 
the advent of the second servant. Two servants 
nowadays seem to stiffen hospitality, though one 
is a very material aid if of the right sort. 

It is true that if the hostess herself is the ser- 
vant, housekeeper and cook, you feel that she 
must really desire your presence or she would 
never take so much trouble for you; but it is 
also true that hospitality with no servant takes 
the edge off the pleasure — for the hostess. 

I do not mean that hospitality ceases because 
there are two servants. It is just that the getting 
out into the kitchen and becoming imbued with 
the excitement incidental to the preparation for 
the guest helps vastly to fill the hostess with the 
spirit of hospitality. Its perfection !froni the 
guest's point of view, its most real and sincere 
form, is found when you drop in, unexpected, up- 
on people whom you know not at all or but slight- 
ly, people whom you come upon at just the point 
along the road where hunger seems to have 
reached an insupportable degree. 

89 



THE VAGABOND BOOK 

When you call at a farm house door and say 
"Could I buy a little lunch here — bread and milk, 
or something?" and are taken into the kitchen 
and put in front of a big bowl of Jersey milk, 
while a whole loaf of the best white bread you 
ever tasted is placed before you, flanked by 
a saucer of berries and sugar and cream, and a 
generous bar of gingerbread; then you know 
that you have come upon hospitality in its un- 
adorned and unadulterated state. 

You eat, and as you do so you talk to the 
housewife and the little girl who comes in with 
"Shep," the pup, telling them who you are, 
whence and whither, and are told in turn of the 
farm affairs, the family, the produce, and the 
tricks of "Shep," and you are met with injured 
looks when you offer to pay ere saying your 
good-bye. 

Such hospitality is not a rarely encountered, 
Utopian condition ; it is the rule with our farmer 
folk and you can readily prove the proposition. 
In fact if you are inclined by nature or by cir- 
cumstance to be cynical, pessimistic, morbid, 
doubting the sincerity of human nature and the 

90 



HOSPITALITY 

genuineness of its protestations, nothing could 
be better calculated to renew in your mind a right- 
heartedness and fill you with a sense of the real 
value of man to man than to be placed where 
dependent temporarily upon true hospitality. 

We rub against the contrary natures and the 
selfish ambitions of the business side of people 
in the every-man-for-himself rush after the dol- 
lars until we form crooked and distorted ideas 
of nearly every one we know. Chance throws us 
upon the hospitality of some such and we find 
them to be, in their homes, genial, congenial, 
cordial, interesting and the reverse of all that we 
had thought them. 

Hospitality is the salvation of the social side 
of man's nature, the part which our swift-mov- 
ing and selfish commercialism is all too much 
inclined to throw into the background. 



91 



THE INN OF THE GOLDEN 
DREAM 

HERE'S to the Inn of the Golden Dream 
Far out on the king's highway! 
Here's to the peace that reigns supreme 
Through all its idle day ! 

With a shady, vine-twined portico 

Alluring from the heat, 
A place where vagrant breezes blow 

Through honeysuckles sweet, 

There's ever a dreamy atmosphere 

Free from carking care; 
And ever a boon companion near 

That joy and cheer to share. 

There's talk that touches deep the heart. 

There's silence saying more; 
There's wine and song, and e'er we part 

There's a toasting o'er and o'er. 

Oh, it's good to halt where a brimming drink 

Awaits your fancy's call; 
So tune your soul to the silvery clink 

Of the ice in the glasses tall. 

92 



THE COVERED BRIDGE 

Forget the world and its toiling scheme, 

Let worries fade away. 
Here's to the Inn of the Golden Dream 

Far out on the king's highway! 



THE COVERED BRIDGE 

DID you live near an old red-covered bridge 
when you were a boy ? 

The man who did not have the ad- 
vantages of a covered bridge education will miss 
from life some of the things that would have 
added very materially to its perfection. A boy 
with neither a barn nor a covered bridge is indeed 
unfortunate. 

All summer the covered bridge is the ideal 
rainy day resort. Through the openings in the 
floor, where here and there a plank is too short, 
fishing is the easiest of sports. Overhead there 
are beams to walk and all shades of daring are 
given their respective opportunities. Swallows 
and robins nest under the eaves, offering a per- 

93 



THE VAGABOND BOOK 

petual temptation; circus posters emblazon the 
available spots and countless patent medicine ad- 
vertisements are waiting to be torn down. ''Pris- 
oner's base" and ''pull-away" are always the best 
games, and some local "Mealys" and "Plupys" 
are ever ready to run match races or to see who 
can make ten laps around the outer edge in the 
least time. 

What a place it is to play all sorts of boys' 
games! A great opportunity awaits some Dan 
Beard who will write a good "Boy's Book of 
Covered Bridge Sports." 

In winter the bridge serves the same purposes, 
though to a less extent; and then, joy of joys! 
boys who are thrifty and boys who are shiftless 
can resort thither with snow shovels to make a 
snow path through the bridge, and to extort 
blackmail from the teamsters who find sleighing 
better over snow than over a bare floor. 

The covered bridge is a directory of all the 
past and present boys of the neighborhood whose 
handiwork is there shown in the "jack-knife's 
carved initial." A visit to the old covered bridge 
of boyhood is like returning in after days to the 

94 



BONFIRE DAYS 

little red schoolhouse, ''the ragged beggar sun- 
ning." Either is prolific of reminiscence, satis- 
faction, regret, as the mood is. These reminis- 
cent times are the times which bring to the sur- 
face all that is best in a man, and human nature 
would soften much its aspects if the best part 
could show at the surface oftener. 



BONFIRE DAYS 

A HAZE above the village rides; 
The late October hills are blue 
With smoke. In wind-blown, rolling 
tides 
The bonfire's fumes go surging through 
The leaf-strewn streets of fall. 
The garden shows a funeral pyre, 

A heap of charred and blackened vines, 
Now blazing clear with flickering fire. 

Now hid by shifting, smoke-built shrines 
With toppling turrets tall. 



95 



THE VAGABOND BOOK 

The shade trees on the avenues 

Have ceased their masquerade and thrown 
To winds their gaudy garb, and crews 

Of boisterous children those far-strewn 
Remnants of mantles gay 
In armfuls heap in a blazing pile. 

The pungent incense fills the air 
And flames leap high and ruddy while 

Their weird, uncertain, fitful glare 
Turns red the twilight gray. 



96 



THE MARCHING SOULS 

DARK, dark, dark, 
The night on the lowland lea; 
Chill, chill, chill, 
The damp of the sombre sea, 
And grisly grim by the brackish brine 
Walk ghastly spectres, an endless line 
Of victims of Neptune's wrath. 

Roll, roll, roll, 

The bones on their salty bed. 
Tramp, tramp, tramp. 

Pale spirits of the dead ; 
And ever on and on they go, 
No peace may any spirit know 

Whose bones are not at rest. 

Red, red, red. 

The fires of Hell may glow; 
White, white, white. 

The lights of heaven show. 
But the souls of those whose bones roll 
Over and over and know no goal, 

Must march and march for aye. 

97 



A PARTICULAR WALK 

EVERY lover of walking has a favorite 
walk. It may be up and over the hill 
back of the village and home by the toll- 
gate — a little long that walk for any but favor- 
able occasions — or it may be around by the 
spring-run and across the river flat by the path 
that follows the stonewall. 

There is one particular walk which would be- 
come your favorite if you were to go that way 
but a single time. It leads out of the village past 
the fair grounds, following the river road for a 
mile and a half to the Falls Mills, where it doubles 
back after a climb up through the gorge by the 
falls. 

Needless to say, the best time for this walk, 
as for many others, though beautiful the year 
'round, is in October. Choose a late afternoon 
and loaf along at a comfortable gait until you 
reach the cider mill, just where you can see the 
lower falls from the highway. After a cupful 
of new cider, go up the hill to the watering trough 
and turn to the left for the short stony road that 

98 



A PARTICULAR WALK 

leads up through the rocks of the glen, high 
above the waters of Honest Brook. 

At a point half way up, where the way enters 
the woods, climb the stonewall and sit and watch 
the shadow of sunset creep up the opposite hill, 
far across the valley, darkening the flush of crim- 
son that mantles the hardwood slope, and tipping 
the highest pyramidal peak with a rosy hue just 
before the twilight falls. 

This resting place is one of those that keep 
a man too long in revery unless he brings him- 
self back to earth very frequently, and if you 
linger you will find it too dark through the rocks 
to distinguish the clean cut Roman profile of the 
Guardian of the Gorge; so keep on your journey 
before the dusk hides the minute beauties of the 
slow turning leaves near the stream. 

The turn at the top of the hill leads back to 
the village over the Meredith road, partly 
through woods and by a long down grade, with 
Round Top and Mt. McGregor still clear against 
the evening sky. 

That walk is susceptible of many variations 
(as all favorite walks are) by which one may 

Lor S)9 



THE VAGABOND BOOK 

travel one or both ways across fields instead of 
by road, and every change of direction brings a 
different vista before the eyes, while a reversal of 
the route alters it completely. 

Every Vagabond has such a favorite tramp — 
dearer to him than cards to the born gambler. 
Every trip brings some new beauty into view 
and there are certain hills whose sky-lines from 
a particular point become as dear to the memory 
as the face of a friend. 

The favorite walk has its antithesis in the al- 
together unfamiliar one. There is something 
utterly fascinating in the tramp through new 
country where the outlook from the next turn in 
the road is known only when it opens before the 
eyes. To the real gypsy heart, the love of the 
new, the desire for fresh sights and unknown 
paths perhaps surpasses the passion for the old 
favorites. To all there is an undeniable charm 
in the unwinding of the new route. It may be 
that it is the young heart that beats more strong- 
ly for the possible adventures of the untried way, 
while the one well on in years turns with greatest 
joy to the old familiar paths. Be that is it may, 

lOO 



THE HILL ROAD 

whether the old or the new charm more power- 
fully, there will always be one walk that is the 
favorite. 

People who do not walk at all, people who 
look indoors for their chief pleasures, though 
they appreciate not the fact, are missing the best 
part of life — the part that Providence meant 
should be placed next to companionship itself. 



THE HILL ROAD 

HOUGH beautiful the valley roads 
That wind along the river, 
Where vine-grown walls and hedges 
green 
In glowing sunlight quiver; 



T 



Though picturesque the woodland ways, 

Cool byways all deserted. 
Where fresh with fragrant brake and fern 

The darksome trail is skirted; 



lOI 



THE VAGABOND BOOK 

Though fair and fine all other paths, 
One road there is that's calling 

Far louder than those quiet ways 
Where peace and calm are falling. 

The hilltop road that meets the sky 

And leads us boldly faring 
Against the very roof of things 

Is breeding deeds of daring. 

Oh roam you roads that suit your will, 

My wander loving rover. 
But when you'd know the life that's real, 

Just tramp the hill road over. 



I02 



HAVING FUN 

I CARE not who you are or what your sta- 
tion in Hfe, if you would have the best fun 
in the world, take a basket filled with simple 
lunch, not forgetting by any chance to include 
some potatoes and green corn if obtainable; get 
a congenial companion and go a mile or so out 
of town into the woods. 

Build you there a fire within a little semi-circle 
of stones and spread your picnic lunch close at 
hand on the windward side of the blaze. Wrap 
the potatoes in many thicknesses of wet news- 
paper and put them among the coals to bake. 
Roast the corn as you want it, on a sharp stick; 
but anyone knows how to roast corn, and to fix 
an outdoor lunch too, for that matter. 

If it be a fall day, just cool enough to make 
the warmth of the fire grateful, so much the bet- 
ter. Talk while the potatoes roast. Talk of out- 
doors; get into the spirit of the woods; let twi- 
light come as you eat ; let it get dark ; who cares ! 
There will be a moon and if you can stay and 
safely keep up your fire until the darkness of twi- 

103 



THE VAGABOND BOOK 

light time gives place to the filtered woodland 
moonlight, you will find the experience some- 
thing well worth repeating. 

The camper who has really lived in the woods 
day In and day out, needs no one to tell him of the 
charm of the campfire at night. I speak of It and 
call It alluring, Inspiring, fascinating, confidence 
begetting, that the Inexperienced may be impelled 
to enter the charmed circle of Its spell. Let me 
advise that you join the cult of the fi re- vv^or ship- 
pers and get more of the pleasure of life than was 
ever yours before. 



104 



MISTRESS WILLOW 

DOWN along the pasture brook 
The bending willow trees 
Sweep and sway, and turn and look 
As brushes past the breeze, 

To see if any overheard 

Perchance, without intent, 
The tender, loving, whispered word 

The Wind spoke as it went. 

Know you what the South Wind sighed 

In Mistress Willow's ear; 
He who's sought her for his bride 

From year to golden year? 

Know you what the answer was ? 

A faintly murmured "yes" ; 
Or asked she for delay because 

Of undue suddenness? 

Down along the pasture brook 

Where the South Wind went, 
Mistress Willow turns to look. 

Blushing shy consent. 

105 



OUT IN THE WIND 

NATURE on a still day falls far short of 
attracting the Vagabond as it does on the 
breezy days. In a calm there is no such 
call to the rover as comes with a good forty-knot 
breeze when all nature is trembling with life. It 
is worth a king's ransom, the joy of walking 
down the road through the pasture land when 
the wind comes rushing up from the south, filling 
the air with fresh falling leaves — every tree on 
the hillside looking like a bag of confetti emptied 
to the breeze. 

There comes with the wind an emphasis to that 
nameless something that makes us gypsy if we 
feel it. If we feel it not, then the wind is dis- 
agreeable, rough, unpleasant, any of the things 
that it gets called by the prim, precise person out 
for a stroll with clothes fixed just so. 

Did you ever see anything more delightful than 
the leaf shower from the maples down lover's 
lane, when in the bright sunshiny morning after 
a snappy frost, a quick breeze springs up and car- 
ries before it every loosened leaf of red and gold ? 

io6 



OUT IN THE WIND 

Did you ever see a field of grain as beautiful 
at rest as it appears when wave after wave sweeps 
over it in golden, uncrested billows ? 

Did the silent times of nature ever lull you into 
the land of memory as has the song of the pines 
while letting the south wind sift through their 
slender fingers? 

Did the calm of a glassy sea ever appeal to you 
like the rush of the surf on a causeway of black 
rocks ? 

As much of the irresistible call of autumn to 
the heart is due to the breezes as to the brightness 
of nature's garb. There is a constant singing in 
the ears of the rover; not the singing of birds or 
summer insects, but a song like the rustling of 
dead leaves or the murmuring of the evergreens ; 
just as the shell, once of the ocean, ever after 
sings the ocean's song. 

In nature song comes with the wind, the gypsy 
heart follows the song, while simple indolence 
bides in the calm. 



107 



THE FOUR WINDS 

WITH a whoop and shriek of ghoulish 
glee 
I swirl through branches stark. 
I am the North wind. The life of me 
Is bluff and bluster; far and free 
I carry my lusty lark. 

From out the dawn with breath all chill 

I glide, a spirit dank. 
Behind, the sea turn's salty frill 
O'erspreads with fog the valley and hill, 

The East wind's ghostly prank. 

Fair are the skies of the westering breeze 

With cloud ships sailing by, 
On, on through boundless azure seas. 
Fair are earth's days 'neath quivering trees; 

The blithe West wind am I. 

Up from the south with smoke-blown hair 

Drifting far a-rear, 
I stroll with languid, passionate air; 
I, the breeze from southern lair ; 

The idling days are here ! 
io8 



BEING LONELY 

We four, the free Borean quartette, 
Wild ranging the earth and sky; 
No Hmits e'er confined us yet. 
No bounds our spirits ever fret; 
And can immortals die? 



BEING LONELY 

WAS there ever a more delicious time for 
being lonely than on a warm night late 
in fall when one may sit by the open 
window with a little southerly breeze stirring 
the dying leaves outside in the moonlight, 
and the chir-r-r, chir-r-r of the cricket sound- 
ing from the grass ? 

If any poet were able to put into words the 
greatest depths of life, depths that come within 
the grasp of the human mind only at such times, 
his would be a song to eclipse in grandeur any 
ever written. There is that in life which the soul 
knows and of which glimpses are occasionally 
visible to the mind, though lying too deep for 
even the poet's craft to lure to the surface. 
109 



THE VAGABOND BOOK 

Life is not the shallow thing that the world 
worshippers count it. Its depths are possessed 
of joys that none dare attempt to portray. It is 
in the loneliness of such nights in their throb- 
bing, thinking loneliness that these depths open 
before us acquainting us with a joy which is no 
less a joy because of its exquisite sadness. 

To say that one knows nothing of such feel- 
ings, that one has never felt the presence of those 
subliminal joys is to argue one's self shallow of 
heart and incapable of the happiness of Vaga- 
bondia. 



no 



SPRING FOR ME! 

THERE'S a whisper in the heart, 
When the buds begin to start, 
That allures. 
When the birds their lyrics spill. 
Loud they call from hill to hill, 
"Joy is yours!" 

How the green rimmed pasture pond, 
How the velvet slopes beyond 

Beckon there! 
How the singing waterfall 
And the piping marshlands call 

"Banish care!" 



Forests, where the sun shines through 
On anemone and rue. 

Lead us on. 
Cowslips by the river bloom ; 
Willows by the old mill flume 

Verdure don. 

Ill 



THE VAGABOND BOOK 

Happiness all seasons know, 
Tides of joy that ebb and flow, 

Spring for me ! 
Nature's calling sinner, saint. 
Burst the bonds of all restraint! 

Come, be free! 



STONEWALLS 

1HAVE sought in vain among the nature 
books so common nowadays for a book of 
stonewalls. If you think stonewalls are not 
a part of nature, it is simply because you are not 
on friendly footing with them. A bran new 
stonewall is indeed an ugly sight, no matter how 
elaborately laid, but the old stone fence of the 
landscape is as much a part of nature as the 
shrubs, and more, by right of its primogeniture. 
Unfortunately however for the lover of the nat- 
ural, the stone fence is doomed to follow into 
obscurity the gnarled and ragged stump fence 
and the zigzag fence of split rails. 

Few people among the younger generation 

112 



STONEWALLS 

have even seen the fence made of huge stumps in 
inverted position with their octopus-hke arms 
reaching heavenward, and many know the rail 
fence only through reading the life of Abraham 
Lincoln, but the stonewall is still a thing common 
enough, especially in the East. 

Did you ever notice how a stonewall reflects 
the nature and even the quality of the land which 
it encloses ? One need not be a geologist to note 
such a resemblance. I wonder that Thoreau did 
not write more about stonewalls and less about 
beans. 

A stonewall is one of the best of companions, 
and if there is any walk that breeds an outdoor 
love, it is that which follows the wall's rambling 
route; where the goldenrod rallies in greatest 
numbers its gilded guidons, where the briers 
seek protection against the ruthless blade of the 
destroying scythe, and where the chipmunk finds 
a broad and unobstructed highway leading to 
the woods. 

Along its course one may wander with a safe 
assurance of a pleasant seat for a rest when the 
spirit bids one stop and muse upon the glow of 



THE VAGABOND BOOK 

sunlight on a distant hilltop, or upon the song 
of the rustling leaves in the poplar grove. 

Anyone can clamber over a stonewall. It 
forms no prohibitory boundary for the walker, 
and yet it restrains even the ambitious sheep and 
forms such an imperishable indication of the 
limit of ownership as outlasts the memory of 
generations. 

The old stonewalls of eastern Massachusetts, 
dating back to Battle of Concord and Lexington 
days are a part of the history of our country. 
Those of other states, notably the South, are not 
less so. What a pity that they must all disap- 
pear to be replaced by spick and span barbed 
wires, the enemy of stock and the despair of 
cross-lots travelers ! 

In the stonewall we truly have a link that 
helps to bind the past of our fathers to the future 
of our children. Its gradual extinction may serve 
to remind the Vagabond that the necessities of 
civilization are slowly driving into the back- 
ground a thousand artifices that have long con- 
tributed a great deal to the pleasure of the lovers 
of outdoors, making clear the fact that though 

114 



ALONG THE OLD STONEWALL 

we enjoy much by living in the commercial pres- 
ent, on the other hand we miss much of which 
the Vagabond of the past was possessor. 



ALONG THE OLD STONE 
WALL 



H 



ERE'S out to stroll by the old stonewall 
That borders in grey the fields of fall. 



Its stones are moss and lichen lined, 
With virgin's bower 'tis overtwined; 

The goldenrod its body-guard, 

With waving guidons, yellow starred. 

Here a place where the top is gone, 
There, and there, the bar-gaps yawn; 

With crumbling spots all sheep-proof made 
By rough hewn rails across them laid. 



"S 



THE VAGABOND BOOK 

Along the way of this old rock fence, 
From open lot to forest dense, 

We roam with eyes for the glories rare 
Of nature*s autumn toilet fair. 

We linger with a lagging tread 

Where orchard fruit lie yellow and red, 

And breathe the odor of drying corn 
In skirting the field all harvest shorn. 

By woodchuck, burrow and bubbling spring 
The vagrant wall goes wandering 

Until it leaves the pasture land. 

With grassy slopes sun brown and tanned, 

And disappears beneath the shade 
Of templed woodland's high arcade. 

There's no such stroll the country o'er 
As that across the dry turf floor 

Of outdoor autumn; and of all 

The ways, choose that by the old stonewall. 



Ii6 



CROSS LOTS 

WHO of the nature lovers would prefer 
the beaten path to the cross-lots way? 
To most people the short cut through 
the woods is the nearest route. To the Vaga- 
bond the old saying is true, "The longest way 
'round is the shortest way home." The cross- 
lots walk will delay you, my gypsy hearted one, 
until the fire burns low and the supper grows 
cold with waiting. 

You and I do not go cross lots because it is 
shorter; we go because we like that way. That 
way stands the little clump of pines where one 
may lie on the needle cushioned ground by the 
hour and dream of the glorious things that could 
be accomplished if circumstances were only suf- 
ficiently favorable. 

That way the little stream sings through the 
willows and an occasional trout darts up over the 
rift into the deep hole where the big elm has 
balked the attacks of the water upon the high 
bank. That way are the songs of birds, the 
flower pictures, the perfumes of the orchard blos- 
soms, hay fields or corn shocks, as the season is. 
117 



THE] VAGABOND BOOK 

That way lies all that is good outdoors, all that 
pulls at the heart strings. 

For sake of the going cross lots one would 
almost be willing to have lived in the pioneer 
days when to go the neighbor's meant to walk 
two or three miles up the hill back of the farm- 
house, through the deep shade of the beech wood, 
across the oak opening with its dancing lights and 
shadows, and down the ravine beyond, following 
a rugged bridle path to the log house. There is 
quite too much improvement and too little orig- 
inal simplicity nowadays. It is difficult to get 
far enough away from the commercialism so 
that one will not be stared out of countenance by 
its omnipresent obviousness. 

If we are properly metropolitan we love the 
noise of traffic (theoretically) and we pride our- 
selves upon the rapid advancement of our times. 
There is something in the power, in the momen- 
tum of our civilization that appeals even to the 
Vagabond in a general way ; but we like to leave 
it all behind and get where it can be forgotten. 
We would like to get where it would efface itself 
from our minds, where there need be no sensible 

ii8 



CROSS LOTS 

effort to forget, but its universality makes that 
impossible. Even when sitting down to write of 
the beauties of Cross Lots one can scarcely re- 
frain from drifting back into a consideration of 
what one goes cross lots to avoid. 

Never mind! The gypsy heart will find that 
while it is likely to forget commercialism in the 
halls of finance, it can never forget nature in the 
woods and fields. 



119 



T 



JUNE 

HE joys of June, O Heart, are here ; 
Now let me whisper ; bend an ear. 



Just out beyond the village end 
Where you and I our way may wend, 

There stretches, 'neath the osiers tall, 
A lane where long, green shadows fall. 

Below the willows, overhung 

By bending branches outward flung. 

The mill-stream freed from tread-mill grind 
Slips on, a simpler life to find. 

Its laughing song but echoes there 
The songs of willow choir lofts, where 

A thousand feathered pipes o' Pan 
Make rhythmic challenge, clan to clan. 

A meadow's daisy-dotted plain, 
Where bobolinks to sport are fain, 



1 20 



JUNE 

Sweeps down the slope to edge of rill 
And back again to hooded hill ; 

While floating on the drifting wind 
Come perfumes such as lead the mind 

On journeys far — as far away 
As Blessed Isles or dim Cathay. 

How twilight in the willowed lane 
Will sweeten life and dull its pain! 

How morning there, where sweeter dews 
Than those of Paradise infuse, 

Inspires the soul to do and dare, 

To fling to winds creed, custom, care! 

How clarion noon, rare noon of June, 
Will set one's love of life in tune! 

What banks of blossom line the way! 
What June-born zephyrs o'er them play ! 

Beneath the trees what vistas show, 
Where radiant sunlight sets aglow 



121 



THE VAGABOND BOOK 

The clover-perfumed hunting ground 
Where bee and butterfly abound! 

O Heart, the lure of willowed lane 
And joys of June are here again. 

No sweeter secret can I tell, 

All souls with happiness to swell. 

June, June, let lovers' voices croon, 
Let all earth sing I O Heart, 't is June 1 



122 



H 



OCTOBER 

ERE'S to ripe October, lads; 

Sing ho for her blazing hills, 
With purpling vine and air like wine 

That through us throbs and thrills! 



Sing ho for crispy, sparkling dawns 

That set the foot astir 
To travel down the highway brown. 

Through falling leaf and burr! 

O red and gold; O red and gold; 

And haze in the faraways, 
The roadsides blue with asters hue, 

Green sedge by the waterways! 

The rover heart finds over- joy. 
The wayworn heart finds life; 

Then ho for the time when spirits climb 
Beyond the clash of strife! 



123 



AT THE OLD HOMESTEAD 

AMONG the scenes most deeply impressed 
upon the mind of the city-bred man are 
those of his rare boyhood visits to the 
country, and valued highly among his mental 
treasures are memories of days spent in visits to 
country relatives where the welcome of the farm 
was of a hearty, cordial nature, backed by a hos- 
pitality that knew none of the town's mechanical 
formality. 

Many a man who clings too tenaciously to 
money making from year's end to year's end has, 
in the heat and humidity which crowd the city's 
summer night, thought longingly of an arrival 
alone on a July evening years ago at grand- 
father's farm; of the impatient, boyish eagerness 
to visit at once the barns, the horses and the 
cattle, and to explore without delay all the odd 
corners of a place full of novelty and entrancing 
possibilities — only reluctantly admitting the pro- 
priety of postponing his divers excursions until 
morning. 

How vividly the man's present position in a 

124 



THE OLD HOMESTEAD 

life of care and worry contrasts with that of the 
boy the first night on a farm ! Taken to a scrupu- 
lously neat little bedroom at the head of the front 
stairs, he was left with a good-night kiss by a 
fond aunt, and was soon in bed, with probably a 
homesick tear or two in his eyes as he thought 
of the distance between himself and father and 
mother. 

In at the vine-covered window was wafted the 
sweet perfume of a flower garden, old fashioned 
in its growth of hollyhocks, sweet peas, mignon- 
ette and lavender; while from beyond, through 
the myriad rustling leaves of the orchard, came 
the music of the brook as it rippled along over 
the mossy stones, between banks overhung with 
willows and sedges, singing the same happy song 
that marked its course in the bright sunlight of 
mid-day, though how differently its cadences 
effect the listener who hears them breaking 
through the solemn stillness of a summer night! 

Mingled with the incessant babble of the brook 
came the plaintively weird notes of the "peeper," 
and at intervals the harsh "garung" of a solitary 
frog from among the sweet flag and the cat- 



THE VAGABOND BOOK 

tails in a far-off marshy spot. Soothed by these, 
nature's own soft lullabys, weariness soon over- 
came the home-longing, and restful and refresh- 
ing Sleep took the boy in her arms. 

The man can remember few happier occasions 
than the morning of his first awakening to the 
joys of farm life when, aroused by a gentle tap 
on his door, he bounded out of bed at once, 
anxious to be up and doing. The early morning 
sunlight filtered through the vines into his room, 
and the cooing of the doves around the barn 
could be heard, taking the place of the daybreak 
carnival of the wilder birds in the orchard trees. 

By the time he came downstairs the family 
breakfast was ready, and after a hearty meal he 
set out upon his tour of exploration. It was 
haying time and when he reached the barn he 
found the horses hitched to a mowing machine 
and just starting for the meadow. Of course 
he followed in their wake and was soon watching 
the daisy tops tremble and fall before the ruth- 
less cut-bar while strawberries in profusion 
crimsoned the white petals as they were crushed 
beneath the horses' tread or the iron wheels of 
the mower. 

126 



AT THE OLD HOMESTEAD 

As the sun rose higher, the circumference of 
the plot of standing grass contracted until the 
bob-o'-links that had fluttered about so gayly in 
the earlier morning, betook themselves to fresher 
fields, where their erratic flights and more 
erratic song would be uninterrupted. 

By noon the grass was down and there showed 
only the long tracks of the mower's wheels with 
the timothy laid smoothly between, while around 
the outer edge by the stone wall, were tumbled in 
ragged confusion the rough briars and the alders 
trimmed out with a scythe, and over it all hov- 
ered the sweet scent of the drying grass. 

In the afternoon with the barns deserted, the 
men and horses at work, the cattle in the pasture, 
and even the ubiquitous hens foraging or dusting 
themselves in the highway, the boy explored the 
hay-mows and turned somersaults down their 
uneven surfaces, or jumped from the big beam 
to the springy cushion below ; raced up and down 
the stationary ladders whose hard rungs were 
worn smooth and slippery by years of everyday 
use; climbed over feed-bins and mangers, 
crawled through stanchions and under dusty, 

127 



THE VAGABOND BOOK 

cobwebby stairways until, when the horn sounded 
summoning all hands to supper, he emerged from 
the barn a tired and dirty, but happy youngster. 

Following the early supper-time came milking, 
which was a process new to the boy, and with 
much interest he watched the cows wander 
through the pasture bars into the barnyard, one 
by one finding their devious ways into the right 
places in the stable; and he has probably never 
in later years seen anything that has excited his 
wonder and admiration as did the ability of the 
hired man to milk into the mouth of an old tabby 
cat as she sat on the stable window-sill waiting 
for her regular portion. 

This day was but one of a succession of days 
of unalloyed pleasure, in which the hay was dried 
and brought in with shouts of laughter from the 
high loads upon which the boy rode in state to 
the barn where he was tossed like a big ball over 
into the mow. 

One source of joy was the little stream which 
wandered along the side of the meadow, and 
further down passed from view in the woods 
that descended the hill to its edge, and in the cool 

128 



AT THE OLD HOMESTEAD 

depths of whose pools where the water swirled 
around the big rocks or writhed through the 
gnarled roots that thrust their octopus-like arms 
into the chattering current, there lurked trout in 
abundance. 

Then, too, there were eggs to be hunted lest 
some motherly inclined biddy should hide her 
nest and bring forth one day a brood of too late 
summer chicks. There were small pigs, ducks, a 
flock of pigeons, turkeys, and one grandly proud 
peacock. Each came in for its share in contrib- 
uting to the amusement of the boy visitor, and 
when the time came for him to go back to his 
city home, it was with feelings of genuine sad- 
ness that he parted from every inhabitant of the 
farm, from the mouse he had captured alive in 
the granary, to grandfather himself who knew 
that nothing was too good for that boy. 



129 



OLD HOME HILLS 

OLD home hills that shimmer and shine 
From valley land to timber line, 

Ribbed with drifts where stone walls 
stood, 
Crowned by the blue and barren wood, 
Dotted with sombre spruce and pine, 
Each with its peaked, snowy hood ; 

Spring-time hills of sober brown, 
Early green, where ripple down 

A myriad minute waterways; 

Hills whose smiles on April days 
Displace the winter's darkling frown 

And charm again our eager gaze; 

Hills of summer's dusky green 

Where stately trees their verdure preenr 

Hills whose softened outlines lie 

Graceful 'gainst an azure sky 
While the velvet clouds careen 

Over plumed hilltops high ; 



130 



OLD HOME HILLS 

Autumn hills of opal hue 
Reaching up to heaven's blue. 

Or flaming bright with red and gold, 

Gayest of nature's colors bold, 
With dazzling beauties ever new 

That our enchanted eyes behold ; 

These are the old home hills we know 
And love through rain or sun or snow. 

Though wandering wide from land to land. 
Though under foreign flags we stand. 
We follow in our minds their slow, 
Constant changing, ever grand. 



131 



GOING FISHING 

FISHING nowadays could scarcely be 
properly called "The Contemplative 
Man's Recreation," as Walton described 
it. It has become one of the strenuous sports of 
the time of too much strenuousness. To most 
people it means whipping as many miles of some 
stream as can be covered in a day, and bagging 
as many fish as can be captured in the time. I 
suppose there must be two kinds of fishing — the 
strenuous and the contemplative fishing. 

The former kind is the more exercise, the more 
fashionable, if fashions there be in fishing, and 
perhaps gets the more fish, but even so, the con- 
templative fisherman gets the more real enjoy- 
ment out of the sport. 

The good Sir Isaac was never guilty of seeing 
how many fish he could catch or of boasting of 
the number. He made it his pride to get the 
best of the available fish and to go still further, 
seeing that they were prepared for the table in 
the way that produced the best results. 

If vou belong to the tribe of strenuous fisher- 

132 



GOING FISHING 

men you will not enjoy a talk about the other 
sort of fishing. The best sort of fishing is not 
the sort that counts its catch at every fresh addi- 
tion to the basket. The real fun of a fishing 
excursion is the fishing, not the fish. The means, 
not the end, is the enjoyable part. 

The sort of an expedition that a boy likes 
begins with getting up at three o'clock in the 
morning, sallying forth to the best trout stream 
and commencing to fish at daylight. A boy will 
get up at two o'clock to go fishing when you 
could not drag him out at seven to weed garden 
— and he is not to be blamed for that either. 

A boy is not a contemplative fisherman, nor 
does he belong to the other class, but he will sur- 
prise you with the amount of philosophy of which 
he is innocently capable. He will surprise you 
too with the number of fish that he will catch. 
Few boys are wanton in their fishing or their 
hunting. Their love of killing for the mere sake 
of killing has not yet been developed. That will 
come when they arrive at the age of thinking 
themselves men. 

When you go fishing, take time. Never go in 

^33 



THE VAGABOND BOOK 

a hurry if you would enjoy yourself. No sport 
so imperatively requires an utter disregard of the 
fleeting hours. No sport is so thoroughly the 
Vagabond's own. 

The very best plan for a fishing trip is to get 
all things ready at night for a start at an early 
hour in the morning. Have breakfast in the gray 
dawn and set out afoot. It is not to be a Pull- 
man car pilgrimage but a little journey to the 
home of the finny tribe. 

The river is easy of access but there are few 
trout there. The fish that we want are in the 
smaller streams that come wandering down the 
little valleys tributary to the main one. If you 
cannot get the right sort of a companion for the 
trip, go alone. A man who likes the con- 
templative sort of angling will enjoy it by himself 
and be none the less a companionable fellow at 
that. Chatterboxes are not fishermen and fisher- 
men are never chatterboxes when they are fishing. 

A good company for a fishing expedition is 
made up of a small boy and his uncle. It is good 
company for the small boy and good company for 
the uncle. They meet on equal ground and on 

134 



GOING FISHING 

an even basis. Age is no advantage and youth is 
no handicap. 

The two start down along the brown highway 
in the early morning light, talking as they go of 
the good holes in the brook they are to fish and 
of the bait that is most likely to prove effective. 
By the time they reach the point where the smaller 
stream branches off and the rough, stony by-road 
meets the better river highway, it is full daylight 
and a crimson aureole shows where the sun will 
appear in less than an hour. 

Up the little stream a short distance stands the 
old sawmill that has cleared the hillsides of the 
valley of spruce and pine and that is now a bat- 
tered wreck with a mud-filled pond above the 
falls where the water tumbles down over the 
mossy planking of the dam and spurts out from 
the places where an occasional plank is gone. 

In the hole where the fallen water eddies 
around before starting for the river, the boy finds 
his first trout, while his older companion is yet 
fixing his rod. Then up the stream they go, 
working slowly along through willow copse and 
tangled woods and across pasture and meadow 

135 



THE VAGABOND BOOK 

land, pulling here a gamy fish from a rift and 
there a twenty-ounce beauty from a hole under 
the birches. 

Snappy dace fool them and minnows use up 
the bait, but the sport is good and each fisherman 
follows his own pace and keeps his own counsel. 
Time counts for naught and before they have 
given hunger a thought it is noon, and as the fact 
is made patent by a glance at their diminutive 
shadows, they realize that it is many hours since 
they have eaten and that lunch would be and is 
the most desirable thing in the world. 

Here is a spot where a clump of water beeches 
surrounds a patch of smooth greensward, making 
an ideal dining hall. Then comes an hour of rest 
with an interchange of experiences, a telling how 
this big one got away just as he was almost in 
the basket, and how that old and cunning chap 
in the hole below the woods must be caught on 
the return. The little incidents of such a trip are 
of no moment, yet how charmingly they beguile 
the time of lunch, taken as they arc, between bites 
while the trout in the baskets attract occasional 
attention by their fluttering. 
136 



GOING FISHING 

After lunch, on again up the ever-narrowing 
stream, fishing the spring-runs and the cold-pools 
until there is scarcely water enough to wet the 
feet. Then a reeling up of lines and a disjoint- 
ing of rods for the homeward trip. The bait is 
thrown away, except the bit that the boy saves 
for that one big trout, and the return walk begins 
with the sun well on its downward way. Just as 
it touches the tree-tops on the western crest, they 
reach the hole at the edge of the woods, and after 
a careful preparation of bait and a cautious up- 
creeping the boy throws his line out into the pool 
for the wary one. 

There is a moment of waiting, tense on the 
fisherman's part, cautiously intent on the part of 
the watcher ; then a tug at the hook, a darting of 
the line through the water, a swish, a splash — 
and once more the biggest fish has got away ! 

But this serves only to add to the interest of 
the conversation on the way and to renew in the 
boy the resolution to get that particular fish. 

As twilight falls on the homeward journey 
conversation stops or becomes only a matter of 
exclamations over some new appearing vista 

137 



THE VAGABOND BOOK 

through the trees or some new and glorious tinge 
of the sunset. It has been a happy day, a day 
free from the care that shortens life. It has been 
a day when to weary one's self was to rest one's 
self abundantly, for it has rested the brain of the 
man and added to his store of physical health, 
while the boy has gained an added knowledge of 
patience, an added love for nature and an added 
appreciation of life. 

No fishing of the man who goes into the woods 
and stays for weeks trying to make a record for 
the number or size of his catch, can put the things 
into his soul that he could get in one such day as 
the above. What a time for letting go, for 
loosening that nervous grip on the ambition, for 
resting that persistence, that determination with- 
out which they say we can never succeed ! 

One always pulls the harder after settling back 
and getting a fresh grip, after resting for an in- 
stant. It is not well to try to hold on with all 
one's might all the time. There is plenty of time 
for rest. Let's go a-fishing ! 



13B 



A GOOD-BYE 

HERE'S farewell, my lad, at the parting 
place 
Where our ways must separate! 
God give you wealth of joy and friends 
And the upper hand of fate ? 



''WK IB m^ 



